Reading List for 8-6-2021

Patrick O’Shaughnessy interview of Steve Mandel

This is just one of Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s Invest like the Best podcasts – I highly recommend checking out some others.

Steve Mandel’s track record at Lone Pine is nothing short of exceptional. During the podcast, Steve and Patrick cover a few topics

Sam Walton’s ability to connect with people and retailing as a platform for successful businesses
Investing behind multi-year trends
Characteristics of a successful analyst
Characteristics of a successful management
Each business has a few key drivers- identifying and understanding these key drivers is essential for analysis.

To be useful, information must be important AND knowable.
- - Macroeconomic information is certainly important but it is NOT knowable.
Inflation
- Incredibly important information to know but there are logical arguments on both sides of the “transitory inflation’ versus “1970’s style inflation” argument
Stock Market Forecasters
- Since 2000, the median stock market forecast has never called for a down year
- “year after year, these forecasts are about as accurate as those of a weatherman who always calls for balmy sunshine in a city where it rains or snows 30% of the time.”
In regards to a “Goldilocks” scenario where low interest rates keep the market aloft forever….
- “I’m not smart enough to prove it, but to me these assumptions seem too good to be true. They have the appearance of a perpetual motion machine or a credit card with no credit limit and no requirement to pay off the balance. I can’t tell you exactly what the catch is, but I think there has to be one. Or, perhaps better put, I wouldn’t bet the ranch on there not being a catch.”

Demographics can’t be avoided, glossed over, or manipulated. The below chart is already happening.
As these working-age populations inflect, it will have massive implications for asset prices, geopolitics, and perhaps capitalism itself.