Some links
Wertart has a very good writeup on UK retailer SportsDirect
Punchcard likes used goods retailer Winmark
Forager likes Italian company El.En (I didn’t like El.En 5 years ago)
A few critical observations on Elon Musk and his “Master Plan II”
Some deep thoughts about the “Brexit Blues”
A very interesting reading list (investing & other)
value and opportunity 
Sorry for the typos, it should be “companies”, “government”
I already read the Winmark-post last week. It is a well written article about a very good company. Just the price is not right at the moment… While reading it I was wondering if that business model would also work here in Germany. There are a lot of second hand-shops, you have Ebay and “Babybasar”-events over here where you can buy and sell used stuff for your kids. But there is no real ‘franchise’-shop-system. As far as I understood their main competitive advantage is their product database and their ‘give me your used stuff and you get credit’-model.
Article on the Brexit Blues was very good. Thanks for posting
I also liked this article a lot. Thanks for digging it up.
“Wertart has a very good writeup on UK retailer SportsDirect”
Really? Purely describtive with some comps.
SD is a classical fallen angel and the writer did not address indepth the underlying problems and mitigants….far from an investment case really.
On the other, I thank him and all other bloggers for sharing their thoughts. I just feel that SD warrants much more work than “let’s buy ‘case its cheap”
Maybe you can enlighten us with your thoughts on SD ?
The author is definitely not a fan 😉
The response to Musk’s Master Plan II is extremely hard to read as every second sentence is a personal attack. There’s much better ways of putting together a cohesive argument.
Hey Michael,
Even though some statements are not fit for a proper analysis (calling Elon Musk a con artist), the guy has a point. If we go beyond the insults, every single issue raised is valid: Musk gets away with a lot of things most owners/CEOs wouldn’t and critics are agressively shut down by his fanboys.
Nobody can deny the innovations that came out of Tesla and SpaceX, but there’s a difference between having good ideas and running copanies well. Tesla is still burning cash (getting investor and gonverment subsidies) and missing on deliveries. Most other car companies built a sustainable model from day one.
It’s easier to look like a superstar if you have billions in capital committed as a blank check.
In fact, the critic uses exactly the same rhetoric as Elon Musk. Did you hear Musk talking about Arianespace, Toyota, VW, BMW, etc? His arrogance and insults are just as bad.