How a Plain-English Letter Became the World's Most Influential Investment Education
A meditation on Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder letter, 60 years of patient explanation, and the cultural authority that compounded faster than the stock.
How Howard Marks Built a Cultural Institution Out of Client Letters
A meditation on Oaktree Capital, distressed-debt investing, and the multi-decade memos that became one of the most-read pieces of financial writing in the world.
How Malaysia's Berjaya Built a Food Court Empire
A meditation on Berjaya Group, the conglomerate that owns or franchises most major food court brands across Southeast Asia, and the franchise economics of feeding shopping mall traffic.
The Beanie Baby Bubble That Built and Bankrupted Ty Inc.
A meditation on Princess Diana, McDonald's Happy Meals, and the 1990s collectibles mania that lost a generation of retirees their savings.
The Sealed Super Mario Bros That Sold for $2 Million
A meditation on graded video games, vintage collecting, and a once-children's category that briefly became a high-end alternative asset.
The Fifty-Million-Dollar Mistake That Killed a Brand
A meditation on the 2000 Blockbuster-Netflix meeting, the six-thousand-fold return that was declined in under an hour, and the structural tax that incumbent infrastructure imposes on technological dis…
The Milkshake the United States Drinks Through Everyone Else's Straw
A meditation on Brent Johnson's 2018 dollar thesis, the cascading dollar shortage that has materialized across emerging markets, and the structural advantage of holding the world's reserve currency du…
The Mexican Bakery That Quietly Became the World's Largest
A meditation on Grupo Bimbo, the company that owns Sara Lee, Entenmann's, Thomas' English Muffins, and Arnold — and most Americans have never heard of it.
India's Free-vs-Paid Streaming War
A meditation on Indian OTT, the $5 billion emerging market, and the unusual coexistence of free and premium streaming that no other country has produced at scale.
The $500 Keyboard Hobby Nobody Talks About
A meditation on the mechanical-keyboard subculture, group buys, and a niche obsession that built a multi-hundred-million-dollar industry.
The Convenience Store the Size of a Walmart
A meditation on Buc-ee's, the cleanest highway bathrooms in America, and the discovery that the actual product of a roadside stop is the stop itself.
Why Disney's Theme Parks Are More Profitable Than Its Movies
A meditation on the 60-percent operating margins that quietly fund the entire Walt Disney Company.
The Taiwanese Factory Behind Every Pair of Align Leggings
A meditation on Eclat Textile, the shared fabric supplier of every major athleisure brand, and the durability of a brand premium that buys access to a product anyone else can also access.
The Thirty-Four-Year Drawdown
A meditation on Japan's 1989 Nikkei peak, the balance-sheet recession that followed, and the central-banker lessons printed across the longest sustained equity drawdown in modern history.
When Rare Whisky Stopped Going Up
A meditation on Sotheby's, the rare whisky index, and the multi-decade alternative asset class that quietly entered a bear market.
The Burger Chain That Refuses to Sell Itself
A meditation on In-N-Out's seventy-five-year family ownership, the absent franchise model, and the twenty-billion-dollar offer that keeps being declined.
What Free Trading Was Actually Charging You
A meditation on Robinhood's commission-free pitch, the payment-for-order-flow mechanism it ran on, and the small invisible execution premium that paid for the absence of the visible commission.
The Forty-Seven-Billion-Dollar Sublease
A meditation on WeWork's 2019 peak, the duration mismatch that was always visible in the lease schedule, and the persistent capacity of capital markets to misread a real estate arbitrage as a technolo…
The Retirement of the Robot Rat
A meditation on Chuck E. Cheese's animatronic show, the maintenance economics that finally broke it, and the gradual obsolescence of physical entertainment infrastructure against the wall-mounted scre…
The Nobel Laureates Who Almost Took Down Wall Street
A meditation on Long-Term Capital Management's 1998 collapse, the trillion-dollar leveraged book on a four-billion-dollar equity base, and the rehearsal for 2008.
How Pokémon Go Made $200 Million a Month and Then Quietly Faded
A meditation on the AR mobile game that briefly defined a summer, the Niantic and Nintendo partnership economics, and what happens when a cultural phenomenon outlasts its peak.
The Brazilian Aircraft Maker You've Never Heard Of (But Have Probably Flown)
A meditation on Embraer, the third-largest commercial aircraft manufacturer in the world, and the Latin American champion most American investors don't know exists.
The Bed-in-a-Box That Could Not Make It Out of the Box
A meditation on Casper's 2020 IPO, the unit economics the private market had partially obscured, and the limit of direct-to-consumer brand math when the purchase cycle is measured in years.
The Rolex Daytona Crash Nobody Reads About
A meditation on the secondary market that turned a steel watch into a financial instrument, and what happens when speculative premiums die.