tbone

My fundamental principles of investing: 1. Understand the business you're interested in by reading their financial reports, understanding the unit economics of the business, their leverage and the different forms of financial and operational leverage they might be employing, their share ownership structure (share classes, poison pills) etc. 2. Understand the durable competitive advantages of the business, if present, that will contribute to continued profits and future cash flows even in potentially inflationary periods. These advantages could be regulatory, IP, location, brand, marketing etc. 3. Assess the talent and integrity of the management of the business. Analyze their long term performance, determine the factors that are in their control and compare with their peers in their respective industries, check their previous placements and find out why they left etc. This is one of the most important steps because if a company is retaining earnings annually at 10% of the book value a newly appointed CEO will be responsible for approximately 60% of the capital deployed in a span of only 10 years (10% growth in book value compounded for 10 years increases book value to 259% of the original amount, 159% gain/259% total = 61.39%). CEOs often rise up the ranks by being incredibly talented in narrow fields such as marketing, sales or simply by being good at office politics. The real skill they require is rational capital allocation. Many great companies have been destroyed by poor capital allocators becoming CEO. 4. Last but not least, buying at a significant margin of safety. No matter how wonderful the business is, buying at an insanely expensive price (like how many companies today are valued and how many have been valued in the past) is a good way to achieve poor performance. You have to know how to value businesses and understand how future growth affects value so that you're not overly conservative. Investing is not gambling. It is a craft and an art that only its practitioners can truly appreciate. The capital allocation decisions that investors collectively make over time redirect capital to its most productive uses and allow for economic growth and prosperity. The incredible rise in our quality of life over the last century globally has largely come from capital being redirected by investors to those businesses that have put that capital to its most productive use. Trading options, thereby making bets on the short term volatility of an underlying stock, is not investing (with some exceptions). Buying companies with no profits and no reasonable prospects for future profits is not investing. Buying unproductive assets that will never return cash to you is not investing. Buying bitcoin is not investing. Only exceptional people with an extremely patient temperament will beat the markets over the long term, but just having some general knowledge about the subject and teaching your kids about it can open up a lot of potential. People who don't have the aptitude or the time can just take their excess savings and dollar cost average into a low cost index fund over time (which will give you the return of the market and requires absolutely zero skill). They will get a very satisfactory result over a long period of time as long as they start early and stay persistent no matter how the market gyrates in the short term. Even a small amount of money can grow to a significantly large sum if you understand the power of compounding.

Goldman Saaks saaaaar

"More than 70 representatives of Russia’s business community accompanied Overchuk in a display of how serious their country is about expanding relations with Afghanistan into a strategic partnership."

They were too busy looting, raping women and destroying Kabul.

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This is the Arg Palace, constructed and designed by Amir Abdul Rahman Khan Barakzai in 1880. It is a sprawling complex built on 83 acres in the heart of the capital of the Afghan nation. It's purpose is to serve as the residence and office for the ruler of Afghanistan and his family.