Some links
Great long read on Jack Ma and Alibaba
“The friendly Bear” thinks Lemonade is a “ESG Pump and Dump”
Rob Vinall with a great post on Conspiracy theories
Absolutely must read: Howard Marks on the useless divide between “value” and “growth” investing
Great summary of Nick Sleep’s (Nomad) investment wisdom
Some stock spin-off ideas for 2021
RenTechs “own money” Medaillion fund had another great year, its funds for outside investors however suffered big losses
value and opportunity 
Like the Nick Sleep letters and Rob Vinall article – very greatful to have discovered the latter via your blog! On a somewhat unrelated note, I was curious if your original view of Grenke stock being uinvestable still holds true today, given the outcomes of the investigation so far and the measures that the company has taken. Especially the fact that it intends to fully consolidate its franchise companies going forward, and whether that resolves the biggest concern you seemed to have in the beginning?
Nope, Grenke for me is not interesting and won’t be anytime soon.
Hi,
What’s your view on Howard Marks‘ latest memo? Personnally I understand his key message is that in some cases, companies are so exceptionally good that they indeed command high valuation multiples. Fair point, but I was not too impressed because :
– the valuations of the FANG group has appeared high based on standard metrics for many years and it’s a bit troubling that for an investor of the class of H Marks it took a lockdown and a discussion with his son to realize this point
– Buffett had made clear already in the nineties that the divide between growth and value is irrelevant and artificial in a similar manner
– I would have liked a pragraph in the memo pointing out that a lot of tech companies in the Nasdaq have very poor fundamentals and nonetheless trade at extremely high valuations which cannot be justified ; in this respect Amazon and a few other names, which are cash flow positive and with strong growth factors, are the exception rather than the norm
In this debate, Jeremy Grantham from GMO takes a quite different and bearish view in his latest memo: https://www.gmo.com/europe/research-library/waiting-for-the-last-dance/ , which is more brave in the current market in my opinion… Time will tell how this ends up.
Personally I think there is a big difference between the memos of Grantham and MArks:
Grantham is “talking his book”, i.e. promoting the strategy of the company, He has been calling the bubble now for quite some time. Perosnally, I think you don’t want to be in EM equity when a bubble pops.
Marks in contrast is not trying to sell anything but admitting that he personally has learned something over the past few months. I have been going through a similar process over the last few years.
Indeed, time will tell but I like Howard MArks memo better because it is more personal.