From "How to get a private school education in a public school :

Rebecca said. She learned how to make friends because her Army Family relocated so often. She picked out a few kids she wanted to get to know, each of whom seem to act like her, even look like her. Within a week, it started, nations with each of them: About a classmate, classroom activity, teacher, homework. In all her early interactions, plead what the other kids wanted to play, talked about what they wanted to talk about, knowing that was a time later for the other kids to accommodate her. Within a month, rebecca had a network of friends. Perhaps more important than what Rebecca did what she didn't do: Teasing, being too sensitive two teasing, acting aloof, appearing too anxious to make friends, resizing others, into serious, giggly, showing off, acting silly,. Oh weird, dressing unconventionally or otherwise straining to get attention.

The three question chat: What's the problem? What should we do about it? How will we know it's getting better?

If you could get rid of one subject what would it be? Why?

You may want to consider just living with the problem because you incur costs every time you contact the teacher about a problem. each contact can move you down the scale from interested parent to pushy parent to hell with her parent. Each time you ask the teacher to give your child an extra, you use one up, don't waste an extra on something unimportant.

If your child has a choice, he should sit in a power seat. Everyone knows that it's easier to pay attention in the front seat, but teachers tend to focus on the seeds that are about 25% of the way back and slightly to one side of Center these power seats are the places to be power seats are also great if your child needs help paying attention. it's hard to Chat,doodle, were the teacher's eyes beaming. Teachers appreciate the child who says thank you for helping me. teachers need lots of support because they're never sure how well they're doing . if you let her teacher know you're on his side he will appreciate and remember you

When problem children are unavoidable, it's probably best if you are mildly cordial, friendly not to arouse anger but not so friendly so as to think they're your best friend.

Bullies have told us that humor can offer Define best, especially the target makes himself the butt

Basic investing checklist

Basic investing checklist

1)  Activate System 2 thinking ?  Have you read a company's latest annual report and latest quarterly reports and the annual reports of competitors?

2) How is the income, cash flow compared to debt. Is Debt < 3-4 times cash flow/income? Debt not more than 3-4 times normal income.

3) Debt/pensions and liabilities comparable to cash at hand ?

3) EV/FCF 9-10

4) No more than 7% of portfolio.

5)  Will the company be around in 20 years? Demographics (internet threat, more energy needs - profitable without subsidies. Baby boomers retiring, special living facilities, diagnostics and treatments.)
6) What is the short interest?

7) Is it good for the consumer or are there better substitutes ?

8) What is the ROIC/gross/net compared to competitors?

Best time from Eric Barker's blog

Here’s the best time to get stuff done:

• Think-y stuff in the morning: If you’re reading this at midnight, you’re breaking my heart.
• Afternoons are sluggish — but insightful: Creativity peaks when you aren’t thinking straight.
• Night owl? Strike that — reverse it: I wrote this post during the evening, but don’t worry — I’m a night owl. Hoot. Hoot.
• The two types of breaks: Vigilance breaks are when you take a step back and review your checklist before an important moment. Restorative breaks are when you relax to recharge your dwindling batteries.

Fave bits from Adam Grant's "Originals"

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Originals

• How to maximize your odds of creating a masterpiece? The answer is to come up with a large number of ideas original simply produced a greater volume of work which gave them more variation and a higher chance of origin already.Most eminent creators like Shakespeare Mozart Beethoven they created a lot of work but considered unremarkable by experts.

You got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. in fact frog kissing was one of his mantras he encouraged his engineers to try out many variations to increase the chances of stumbling on the right one.

• The best way to get better at judging your ideas is to gather feedback. Put a lot of ideas out there and see which ones are praised and adopted.

That is one group of forecasters that doesn't come close to attaining mastery- fellow creators evaluating one another's ideas. Most accurate predictor of whether a video would get like shared what peers evaluating one another instead of attempting to access our own originality.

• The evidence helps to explain why many performers enjoy the approval of audiences but covet the adoration of the peers.
• Comedians often say that the highest badge of honor is to make a fellow comics laugh.
• But Berks research suggests that we are also drawn to Peer evaluations because they provide the most reliable judgments.

Just spending six minutes developing original ideas made them more open to novelty improving their ability to see potential in something unusual.

If we want to increase the odds of betting on the best original ideas we have to generate our own ideas immediately before we screen other suggestions. It's best to be a creator in the domain you're judging.

Our intuitions are only accurate in domains where we have a lot of experience and when you spend your studying handbags intuition can beat analysis because your unconscious mind excels at pattern recognition.

• If you stop and take the time to think it's easy to lose the forest for the trees. And dealing with unfamiliar products you need to take a step back and assess them.

He excelled at creating brilliant solutions to problems identified by others, not in finding the right problems to solve.

Every project should begin with the right question

You saw how meticulous Jerry was at his work. That's the passion you're looking for.

Power involves exercising control over others; status is being respected and admired

One power hold of you learned of the peers look down on them, they retaliated by setting up some humility toward humiliating tasks. Exercising power without status elicited increasingly negative reaction.

Status cannot be claimed it has to be earned all granted the way to come to power is not on always community challenge the establishment but first make a place in that and then challenge and doublecross the establishment. As Medina gain respect for these efforts she accumulated idiosyncrasy credits And I latitude to deviate from the groups expectations idiosyncrasy credits a coop respect not rank the beast and contributions professors have higher status if they have beards.

When people present a dropbox or disadvantages I would become an ally. And so sending me they've given me a problem to solve. Babu selling itself to Disney top out next line

The court challenge of speaking up with an original idea is that it's a tune that only you hear in your head you wrote the song it's like typing out a well-known know she rhyme when no one else can hear it.

Eminent psychologist Robert called the The exposure effect: the more often we encounter something the more we like it. Whether you're unhappy with your job marriage you have a choice between exit Weiss existence I neglect

• 
  

1 Accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions

2  establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult

3 being financially independent from parents

4 deciding on beliefs and values independently of parents and other influences

The cultivation of a willingness to defy or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition for intellectual and emotional freedom.

Favorite bits from Barking up the wrong tree

• Many people aren't sure what their strengths are. Drucker offers a helpful definition: What are you good at that consistently produces desired results? 

• Research by Gallup shows that the more hours per day you spend doing what you're good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you're being treated with respect. 

• Without an existing passion and being so eager to please, valedictorians often head in the wrong direction when they are finally free to choose. 

• If someone is too nice, people figure they must be less competent. In fact being a jerk makes other see you as more powerful. Feeling powerless actually makes you dumber. 

• Managing what your boss thinks of you is far more important than actual hard work. 

• Why do jerks succeed? they're assertive about what they want, and they're not afraid to let others know about what they've achieved. 

• Always worrying about being cheated or killed makes transactions too costly, preventing efficient dealings. You need rules and cooperation, and that means trust. 
• Economists  call it the "discipline of continuous dealings". When you know what trust someone, it makes the transaction smoother and faster. The longer the time the anticipated we be dealing with someone, better the behavior we can expect. 
• 
  
• Never betray anyone initially. But if a person cheats you, don't be a martyr. 

• The people who surround us, often determine who we become. Studies show that your boss has a much larger effect on your happiness and success then the company at large. 

• When people do too much and don't ever push back they get taken for granted. A mere two hours a week of helping others is enough to get maximum benefits, no need for guilt and no excuse for saying you don't have time to help others. 

• So what's a good balance? Every Friday send your boss an email summarizing your accomplishments for the week. 

• So to the best of your ability, make things longer term. Build more steps into the contract. The more things seem like a one-off, the more incentive people have to pull one over you. 

• Research shows that even a feeling of control kills stress. Even when you just feel you have control, stress plummets. 

• What's a system that will work when you're trying to turn dreams into reality? How do you know what to quit and what to stick with? One researcher came up with a shockingly easy system. It's called woop. 

• Not only the dreaming not bring you your desires; dreaming actually hurts your chances of getting what you want. It turns out that your brain isn't very good at telling fantasy from reality. When you dream, that gray matter feels you already have what you want and so it doesn't marshall the resources you need to motivate yourself and achieve. Instead, it relaxes. And you do less, accomplish less, and those dreams stay mere dreams. Are you dreaming about how svelte you'll look in that swimsuit after the diet? Women who did that just lost 24 lb fewer than those who didn't. Fantasizing about getting that perfect job? Those who dwelled on it on it sent Fewer applications and ended up getting fewer offers. 

• If dreaming is so bad, why do we do it? Because it's the mental equivalent of getting drunk: It feels really good right now but doesn't lead to good things later. Fantasizing gives the reward before we've accomplished the task and sap's the energy we need to realize it.

• To balance grit and quit use woop : Wish, outcome, obstacle, plan. 

The cool thing is that this process doesn't sap your drive the way just fantasizing does.. But there's an even bigger and benefit to whoop one thats key when you're thinking about Grit and quit. It's like a personal litmus test for feasibility. when your goal is unrealistic you will find yourself less energized and you know it 

• That's what you need: A plan. Most of us don't take the time. We are reactive, like the tribes of the steppes. 
• You need a plan, or you're always going to feel like you're not doing enough. We have so many options these days, that we end up being Pickers, not choosers. 

• Being reactive doesn't just hurt your chances of getting what you want; it also reduces your chances of real happiness. Research shows we often don't choose to do what really makes us happy; we choose what's easy. e.g. TV

• Without a plan, we do whats passive and easy- not what is really fulfilling. The most effective method for reducing stress was having a plan. When we think about obstacles ahead of time and consider how to overcome them, we feel in control.. That's the secret to really getting things done. 
• A feeling of control motivates us to act. When we think we can make a difference, we're more likely to engage. Things aren't as scary when we have our hands on the wheel. 

• The most interesting part - is that it is not actually being in control that causes All these changes, it's just the feeling of control. 

• When you're stressed out, you literally can't think straight.

Checklist Manifesto notes

1 Accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions
2  establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult
3 being financially independent from parents
4 deciding on beliefs and values independently of parents and other influences

The cultivation of a willingness to defy or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition for intellectual and emotional freedom.

There are good checklists and bad, bad check list are vague and imprecise. They're too long they're hard to use; they are impractical. They turn people's brains off rather than on.
 good checklist on the other hand are precise. Theyre efficient, to the point and easy to use evenin difficyllt  situation.  they dont try to spell out everything instead they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps.

When you're making a checklist, you must Define a clear pause point which the checklist is supposed to be used.

 you must decide whether you want or do-conFirm checklist or a do-read Checklist. with a do-confirm checklist he said team members perform their jobs from memory and experience, but then they stop. they pause to run the checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done. with a read-do checklist on the other hand people carry out the tasks as they check them off it's more like a recipe.
 so for any new checklist you have to pick the type that makes the most sense for the situation. the checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it between 5 and 9 items which is the limit of working memory.

You want to keep the list short by focusing on what he called the killer items - the steps that are the most dangerous to skip and sometimes overlooked.
the wording should be simple and exact and use the familiar language of the profession. Even the look of the checklist matters ideally it should fit on one page. It should be free of clutter and unnecessary colors.

Instead they chose to accept their fallibilities - The Simplicity and power of using a checklist. Indeed against the complexity of the wood we must - there is no other choice. When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination. We know the patterns, we see the costs. Its Time to try something else. Try a Checklist

• petesouzaPresident Obama greeting people affected by an F5 tornado in Joplin, Missouri that killed more than 100 people in 2011. “But that does not mean we are powerless in the face of adversity,” he said. “How we respond when the storm strikes is up to us. How we live in the aftermath of tragedy and heartache, that’s within our control. And it’s in these moments, through our actions, that we often see the glimpse of what makes life worth living in the first place."

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYbL0cNFsMC/?hl=en&taken-by=petesouza

Quotes from Pride and Prejudice

Quotes from Pride and Prejudice that spoke to me particularly. I haven't included context, but fans of the book can guess which scenes these lines are from.

• think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
• If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be as happy as you. Till I have your disposition , your goodness,I never can have your happiness.
• And this said she, " is the end of all his friends anxious circumspection! Of all his sisters falsehood and contrivance! The happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!"
• If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. 
• And in the imprudence of anger
• But perhaps he may be a bit whimsical in his civilities. Great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him at his word about fishing, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off his grounds.
• Respect, esteem and confidence had vanished forever.. she endeavored to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible.
• Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.
• One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it
• She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before.
• She tried to recollect some instance of goodness , some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence. But no such recollection befriended her.
• He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world 
• Mrs Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of raising expectations which might only end in disappointment.
• She likes the distinction of rank preserved.
• Every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty behind.
• Where does discretion end and avarice begin?
• A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe.
• All was joy and kindness 
• Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
• There are few people I love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.
• The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke. Certainly replied Elizabeth-there are such people but I hope Iam not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.
• To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.
• The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor , and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.
• Of a fine healthy love it may- every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

My fave bits from "How Children Succeed" by Paul Tough

-The reason the teenage
-The growth mindset : Dweck found that students who believed intelligence was malleable did much better than students who believed that intelligence was fixed.
-It seems that what Stefl was trying to convince her students that not just their intelligence and their character but their very destinies were malleable; that their past performance was not an indication of their future results.
-GPA was cumulative all through high school.
-High school grades reveal much more than mastery of content. They reveal qualities of motivation and perserverence - good study habits and time management skills
-The best predictor of college completion was a student's high school GPA.
-standardized test scores were predicted by scores on pure IQ tests and GPA was predicted by tests of self-control.
-grit - self discipline wedded to a dedicated pursuit of a goal.
-Flow - When a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile

-The incentive processing system makes you more sensation seeking, more emotionally reactive, more attentive to social information. The second is called a cognitive control system, allowing you to regulate all those urges. The reason the The teenage years have always been such a perilous time, is that the incentive processing system reaches its full power in early adoloescence, while the cognitive control system doesn't finish maturing until you're in your 20s. So far a few tennage years, we are all madly processing incentives without a corresponding control system to keep our behavior in check.

It's uncomfortable to focus so intensely on what you're bad at. The following day she would reconstruct the games on the practice boards, Analyzing exactly where a player had gone wrong, what he could've done differently, what might've happened if you had made the better move, and playing out these counterfactual scenarios for several moves before returning to the moment of error. You go over the mistakes you made, all the mistakes you keep making – are you trying to get to the bottom of why you made them. Spiegel tries to lead her students down a narrow and difficult path, to have them take responsibility for the mistakes and learn from them - NOT obsessing over them or beating themselves up for them. When one keeps making mistakes you have to find a way to separate yourself from your mistakes or your losses. I tried to teach my students that losing is something you do not something you are.

When I asked him what was so fun about a year of complete immersion in the chess, he replied it was mostly the feeling of being intellectually productive so much of the time. I feel like I'm not really challenging myself are pushing myself just kind of wasting my brain. I never feel like that when I'm playing or teaching chess. He devoted almost a year to the study of chess eliminating everything else from his life, no parties ,no Facebook, no ESPN , no unnecessary socializing - just hours and hours of chess.

Metacognition as many psychologist call it. -Takes place in the pre-frontal cortex. slowing down, examining impulses and considering more productive solutions to the problem then yelling or shoving.

Two seconds is not slow enough. Look if you make a mistake that's OK. But you do something without even thinking about it? That's not OK I'm very very upset to see such a careless and thoughtless game

The next stop to a successful outcome is creating a series of implementation intentions – specific plans in the form of if-then statements that link the obstacles with ways to overcome them - such as - "if I get distracted by TV after school then I will wait to watch TV until I finish my homework".

When you're making rules for yourself you're enisting the prefrontal car tax as your partner against the more reflexive appetite driven parts of your brain. By making yourself a rule, you can sidestep the painful internal conflict between your desire fried foods and you're welcome for determination to resist them . Rules provide structure preparing us for encounters with tempting stimuli and redirecting attention elsewhere. Before long the rules become as automatic as the appetites they are deflecting.

What private school offers parents about all else is a high probability of non-failure.

For both rich and poor teenagers, certain family characteristics predicted children's maladjustment, including low levels of maternal attachment, high levels of parental criticism, and minimal after school adult supervision. Amongst the affluent children, the main cause of distress was excessive achievement pressures and isolation from parents both physical and emotional.

From: http://www.businessinsider.de/warren-buffetts-investment-manager-ted-weschler-the-recipe-for-financial-success-2016-6?IR=T

BI: And which newspapers do you read on a regular basis?

TW: I have a tradition. I always start each day with reading the local paper of the town I wake up in. Then next one would be USA Today. That gets you a general feeling for the Zeitgeist. They package the news for the

entire population. From an investing standpoint it is relevant to understand what everybody is thinking. Then I generally move up to the New York Times, then the Wall Street Journal and then I end with the Financial Times. And actually I recently just started reading the Handelsblatt global edition.

My favorite bits from "The power of NO" by James Altucher

-By year three you;ve put in 5000-7000 hours of work. That's good enough to be in the top 200-300 people in the world in anything. By year three you will know how to make money.

-What is "it" ? How do I know what I should do ? Whatever area you feel like reading 500 books about. Go to the bookstore or library and find it.

- how to recognize an Abusive person : they try to make you feel guilty, angry, afraid, wrong. They try to make themselves the victim, they turn others against you.
How do I feel about myself when Iam around this person? Do I feel good about myself?
If the answer is no, you know you need to move away from the person. The key is not to engage.

-Letting our thoughts go and being present without naming what is happening all the time gives us a rest and the opportunity to let something else in.

-Be aware that you are making a shift from panic (lots of thoughts) to abundance (fewer thoughts)

-With each thought that comes up, label it as useful or not useful. If I worry about how much money I will have in five years or did at a party last night, this is not useful. What is useful then? Functional things - I need to pack a lunch for the kids right now.

-Sometimes we need rest and proper boundaries. Sometimes we need to do less. When we forget that we have rhythms and cycles just like nature does, we force things, overwork, burn the candle at both ends, and make poor choices as a consequence of exhaustion.

Keeping your stress level down is very important, so here are five things we can think of to say no to so that you can have centered and relaxed days:
 1 Say no to anything that gets in the way of your daily practices, no matter how IMPORTANT it pretends to be.
2 Say no to anything that prevents you from sitting in silence for some time, every day.
4 Do not talk to people who you know do not respect you or who put you down.

- I slide into depression if I forget my daily practice
I started to exercise everyday. I started to eat better. One item for breakfast. A healthy lunch. Tiny dinner. No snacks.
I started to sleep nine hours a night.
I broke off all ties with anyone it felt bad to be around.
I wrote down ideas very day for articles I should write and businesses I could start.
I had to surrender to the fact that I couldn't control everything. But I could be prepared.

-Try this today:
 Write down ten ideas for your job that you think will add above and beyond value.
 Write down the ten next steps for those ideas.

-In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjun that he needs to fight. He is saying that to reach your own divinity, you have to learn to say no and stand up for what is right for you in this moment.You need to learn who you are.

-Rule #1 : Do not do anything you don't want to do.
When you agree to do something you don't want to do, you will resent the person who asked you to do it. You will grow to hate the activity. it will drip like a burning candle into your heart until you're burning with hate for yourself.

-Say no to extra, unnecessary words. Don't say "yeah" in the middle of someone talking. Count to two before responding.
-Complaining is a no!
-If someone is trying to steal our energy, then of course we speak up and do what we can to stop it. We stand up for ourselves.

Decision making under uncertainty

From Seth Klarman's Margin of Safety:

Some investors insist on trying to obtain perfect knowledge about their impending investments, researching companies until they think they know everything there is to know about them. They study the industry and the competition, contact former employees, industry consultants and analysts and become personally acquainted with top management. They analyze financial statements for the past decade and stock price trends for even longer. This diligence is admirable, but it has two shortcomings. First, no matter how much research is performed some information always remains elusive; investors have to learn to live with less than complete information. Second, even if an investor could know all the facts about an investment, he or she would not necessarily profit.

"Moreover, business information is highly perishable. Economic conditions change, industries are transformed, and business results are volatile. The effort to acquire current, let alone complete, information is never ending. Meanwhile, other market participants are also gathering and updating information, thereby diminishing any investor's informational advantage.

"Most investors strive fruitlessly for certainty and precision, avoiding situations in which information is difficult to obtain. Yet by the time high uncertainty is resolved, prices are likely to have risen. Investors frequently benefit from making investment decisions with less-than-perfect knowledge and are well rewarded for bearing the risk of uncertainty. The time other investors spend delving into the last unanswered detail may cost them the chance to buy in at prices so low that they offer a margin of safety despite the incomplete information. (Low prices compensate for uncertainty.)"

“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”  Jane Eyre (charlotte bronte)

“What's meant to be will always find a way”  Trisha Yearwood

Great WB Quotes

It must be noted that your chair man, always a quick study, required only 20 years to recognize how important it was to buy good businesses. In the interim, I searched for bargains and had the misfortune to find some. My punishment was an education in the economics of short-line farm equipment, third place department stores, and New England textile manufacturers.

Experience, however indicates that the best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing 5 or 10 years ago.But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error.

To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven footers. The finding may seem unfair, but in both business and investments it is usually far more profitable to simply stick with the easy and obvious than it is to resolve the difficult.

What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know,  but rather how realistically they define what they don't know. An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.

Every day, in countless ways, the competitive position of each of our businesses grows  either weaker or stronger. If we are delighting customers, eliminating unnecessary costs and  improving our products and services, we gain strength. But if we treat customers with indifference or tolerate bloat, our businesses will wither. On a daily basis effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively though there are consequences that are enormous.

If the choice is between a questionable business at a comfortable price or a comfortable business at questionable price, we much prefer the latter.  What really gets our attention, however, is a comfortable business at a comfortable price.

Home ownership is a wonderful thing. My family and I have enjoyed my present home for 50 years, with more to come. But enjoyment and utility should be the primary motivation for purchase, not profit or refi possibilities. And the home purchased ought to fit the income of the purchaser.

http://www.quora.com/Is-2015-a-good-time-to-buy-a-house-in-the-Bay-Area

...Someone I used to work for once told me that the trick to Bay Area real estate is just to buy and then be prepared to hold -- eventually you won't be wrong. But if you wait, you run real risk of the market running away from you.

http://wrongtool.kostadis.com/will-happen-again/#comments

My fave bits from Guy Spier's book "The Education of a Value Investor" :

GLIDE recognises that "everyone has a potential no matter what their circumstances. This is a proven process that a combination of love and time and energy and resources can produce a different human being."

Warren had structured his environment to enhance his ability to make rational decisions. It contained very little that could clutter his mind. He had only two chairs and no space for large meetings.

Warren's desk was so small that there was no room for piles, An inbox and outbox Lay on top of his desk, along with the box labeled "too hard" – a visual reminder that he should wait patiently until the perfect opportunity arrives.

There was no Bloomberg terminal in Buffets office.

Warren told us that he has a place in his office when he can nap too.


Virtually all my investments are in companies where the long term outcome is all about inexorable: the company is heading in that positive direction, and it's really just a question of how long it takes. Buffets holdings clearly possess the same precious characteristic. Indeed, he uses the word inevitable to describe the positive outcome that he ultimately expects.

Gather investment research in the right order. The first idea to and to the human brain tends to be the one that sticks.  Look for disconfirming evidence.

I need to be extremely careful about the order in which I gather research and explore investment ideas.this might not seem important to many investors, but the order in which I read the materials matters greatly since whatever I take in first affects me unduly.
My routine is to start with the least biased I'm most objective sources. These are typically the companies public filings, including the annual report 10K, 10Q and proxy statement.

The Tupperware misadventure taught me an invaluable lesson: I want to invest only in companies that are a win-win for the entire ecosystem. What's important is the idea that a great company makes tons of money while Adding real value for its customers.

Greeces national lottery firm has a license to print money. But it preys on people's weaknesses. I prefer to invest in businesses that benefit society.

Burry notes and quotes

-Michael Burry would screen the market looking specifically at the enterprise value/EBITDA ratio (investing based on the EV/EBITDA ratio has been shown to outperform other valuation metrics over time).



-“I’ll then look harder to determine a more specific price and value for the company. When I do this I take into account off-balance sheet items and true free cash flow. I tend to ignore price-earnings ratios. Return on equity is deceptive and dangerous. I prefer minimal debt, and am careful to adjust book value to a realistic number.”

-Minimal debt, a low P/B ratio (adjusted to reflect realistic asset values), strong free cash flow and low EV/EBITDA ratio were the four traits Michael Burry looked for in an investment.

-Secondly, Michael Burry looked for what he called ‘rare birds’, or asset plays in other words.

-Thirdly, Burry looked for value in the type of company favored by Buffett. (Those with a sustainable competitive advantage as demonstrated by longstanding and stable high returns on invested capital, although only at a reasonable price.)


Avant! had $100 million in cash in the bank, was still generating $100 million year of free cash flow — and had a market value of only $250 million!

Michael Burry started digging; He was able to see that even if the executives went to jail (as they did) and the fines were paid (as they were), Avant would be worth a lot more than the market assumed…Burry bought his first shares of Avant! in June 2001 at $12 per share…Mike Burry kept on buying it — all the way down to $2 a share…Four months later Avant! got taken over for $22 a share. ‘That was a classic Mike Burry trades,’ says one of his investors. ‘It goes up by ten times but first it goes down by half.'”


“As for when to buy, I mix some barebones technical analysis into my strategy…Nothing fancy. But I prefer to buy within 10% to 15% of a 52-week low that has shown itself to offer some price support. That’s the contrarian part of me. And if a stock — other than the rare birds discussed above — breaks to a new low, in most cases I cut the loss…”

Michael Burry’s portfolio management was developed through trial and error:


“I like to hold 12 to 18 stocks diversified among various depressed industries, and tend to be fully invested. This number seems to provide enough room for my best ideas while smoothing out volatility, not that I feel volatility in any way is related to risk. But you see, I have this heartburn problem and don’t need the extra stress…I know my portfolio turnover will generally exceed 50% annually… I am not afraid to sell when a stock has a quick 40% to 50% a pop.”

Source: http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Michael-Burry-Case-Studies.pdf

The future is always coming up with surprises for us, and the best way to insulate yourself from these surprises is to diversify," Shiller said.

 My fave ones from Seth Klarman's CNBC article on Buffett 

1. Value investing works. Buy bargains.

2. Quality matters, in businesses and in people. Better quality businesses are more likely to grow and compound cash flow; low quality businesses often erode and even superior managers, who are difficult to identify, attract, and retain, may not be enough to save them. Always partner with highly capable managers whose interests are aligned with yours.

4. Consistency and patience are crucial. Most investors are their own worst enemies. Endurance enables compounding.

5. Risk is not the same as volatility; risk results from overpaying or overestimating a company's prospects. Prices fluctuate more than value; price volatility can drive opportunity. Sacrifice some upside as necessary to protect on the downside.

6. Unprecedented events occur with some regularity, so be prepared.

7. You can make some investment mistakes and still thrive.

8. Holding cash in the absence of opportunity makes sense.

10. Candour is essential. It's important to acknowledge mistakes, act decisively, and learn from them. Good writing clarifies your own thinking and that of your fellow shareholders.

12. Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.

“The worst sort of business,” wrote Warren Buffett, billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway chairman, to shareholders in 2008, “is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money.” He then came straight to the point: “Think airlines.”