Top Investors Quotes

This is how top investor Warren Buffett does things: “Each deal we measure against the second-best deal that is available at any given time—even if it means doing more of what we are already doing.

If you see somebody with even reasonable intelligence and a terrific passion for what they do and who can get people around them to march, even when those people can't see over the top of the next hill, things are gonna happen

Everyone our company touches should experience a net value-add as a result of our investment activities.

The founders of start-ups as varied as YouTube, Palantir Technologies, and Yelp all worked at PayPal. Another set of people—including Reid Hoffman, Thiel, and Botha—emerged as some of the technology industry’s top investors. PayPal staff pioneered techniques in fighting online fraud that have formed the basis of software used by the CIA and FBI to track terrorists and of software used by the world’s largest banks to combat crime. This collection of super-bright employees has become known as the PayPal Mafia—more or less the current ruling class of Silicon Valley—and Musk is its most famous and successful member.

​The average wage in Australia is $78 832, according to the ABS. If you plug that into globalrichlist.com it shows that you're in the top 0.28 per cent of the richest people in the world by income. Yes, even on the average Aussie wage you're richer than 99.72 per cent of the global population.

I'll put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book—"Honesty is the Best Policy"? That's it. I'm working honesty for a graft. I'm the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have my address inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but it's a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.

the yen upturn coincided exactly with the start of a topping process in global stocks. By first quarter 2008, the yen had risen to the highest level in three years against the U.S. dollar as global stocks tumbled.

VC bias toward swinging for the fences means companies that could have exited easily in the $20 to 30 million range will end up being 'ridden over the top' and eventually worth much less—or possibly nothing at all.

Many security analysts still believe that agencies are a poor investment. Not so Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors in the world. He has taken substantial positions in three publicly held agencies, and is quoted as saying, ‘The best business is a royalty on the growth of others, requiring very little capital itself … such as the top international advertising agencies.’ If

Ever since the 2008 global financial crisis, central banks had ventured, not by choice but by necessity, ever deeper into the unfamiliar and tricky terrain of “unconventional monetary policies.” They floored interest rates, heavily intervened in the functioning of markets, and pursued large-scale programs that outcompeted one another in purchasing securities in the marketplace; to top it all off, they aggressively sought to manipulate investor expectations and portfolio decisions.

Most non-European empires of the early modern era were established by great conquerors such as Nurhaci and Nader Shah, or by bureaucratic and military elites as in the Qing and Ottoman empires. Financing wars through taxes and plunder (without making fine distinctions between the two), they owed little to credit systems, and they cared even less about the interests of bankers and investors. In Europe, on the other hand, kings and generals gradually adopted the mercantile way of thinking, until merchants and bankers became the ruling elite. The European conquest of the world was increasingly financed through credit rather than taxes, and was increasingly directed by capitalists whose main ambition was to receive maximum returns on their investments. The empires built by bankers and merchants in frock coats and top hats defeated the empires built by kings and noblemen in gold clothes and shining armour. The mercantile empires were simply much shrewder in financing their conquests. Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest.

Seen through the lens of human perception, cycles are often viewed as less symmetrical than they are. Negative price fluctuations are called “volatility,” while positive price fluctuations are called “profit.” Collapsing markets are called “selling panics,” while surges receive more benign descriptions (but I think they may best be seen as “buying panics”; see tech stocks in 1999, for example). Commentators talk about “investor capitulation” at the bottom of market cycles, while I also see capitulation at the top, when previously prudent investors throw in the towel and buy.

Here are my simple rules for identifying market tops and bottoms: 1. Market tops are relatively easy to recognize. Buyers generally become overconfident and almost always believe “this time is different.” It’s usually not. 2. There’s always a surplus of relatively cheap debt capital to finance acquisitions and investments in a hot market. In some cases, lenders won’t even charge cash interest, and they often relax or suspend typical loan restrictions as well. Leverage levels escalate compared to historical averages, with borrowing sometimes reaching as high as ten times or more compared to equity. Buyers will start accepting overoptimistic accounting adjustments and financial forecasts to justify taking on high levels of debt. Unfortunately most of these forecasts tend not to materialize once the economy starts decelerating or declining. 3. Another indicator that a market is peaking is the number of people you know who start getting rich. The number of investors claiming outperformance grows with the market. Loose credit conditions and a rising tide can make it easy for individuals without any particular strategy or process to make money “accidentally.” But making money in strong markets can be short-lived. Smart investors perform well through a combination of self-discipline and sound risk assessment, even when market conditions reverse.

This was the engine of doom.” He’d draw a picture of several towers of debt. The first tower was the original subprime loans that had been piled together. At the top of this tower was the triple-A tranche, just below it the double-A tranche, and so on down to the riskiest, triple-B tranche—the bonds Eisman had bet against. The Wall Street firms had taken these triple-B tranches—the worst of the worst—to build yet another tower of bonds: a CDO. A collateralized debt obligation. The reason they’d done this is that the rating agencies, presented with the pile of bonds backed by dubious loans, would pronounce 80 percent of the bonds in it triple-A. These bonds could then be sold to investors—pension funds, insurance companies—which were allowed to invest only in highly rated securities.

The case for bitcoin as a cash item on a balance sheet is very compelling for anyone with a time horizon extending beyond four years. Whether or not fiat authorities like it, bitcoin is now in free-market competition with many other assets for the world’s cash balances. It is a competition bitcoin will win or lose in the market, not by the edicts of economists, politicians, or bureaucrats. If it continues to capture a growing share of the world’s cash balances, it continues to succeed. As it stands, bitcoin’s role as cash has a very large total addressable market. The world has around $90 trillion of broad fiat money supply, $90 trillion of sovereign bonds, $40 trillion of corporate bonds, and $10 trillion of gold. Bitcoin could replace all of these assets on balance sheets, which would be a total addressable market cap of $230 trillion. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s market capitalization is around $700 billion, or around 0.3% of its total addressable market. Bitcoin could also take a share of the market capitalization of other semihard assets which people have resorted to using as a form of saving for the future. These include stocks, which are valued at around $90 trillion; global real estate, valued at $280 trillion; and the art market, valued at several trillion dollars. Investors will continue to demand stocks, houses, and works of art, but the current valuations of these assets are likely highly inflated by the need of their holders to use them as stores of value on top of their value as capital or consumer goods. In other words, the flight from inflationary fiat has distorted the U.S. dollar valuations of these assets beyond any sane level. As more and more investors in search of a store of value discover bitcoin’s superior intertemporal salability, it will continue to acquire an increasing share of global cash balances.

We're all equal before a wave. —Laird Hamilton, professional surfer In 2005, I was working as an equity analyst at Merrill Lynch. When one afternoon I told a close friend that I was going to leave Wall Street, she was dumbfounded. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked me. This was her polite, euphemistic way of wondering if I'd lost my mind. My job was to issue buy or sell recommendations on corporate stocks—and I was at the top of my game. I had just returned from Mexico City for an investor day at America Movíl, now the fourth largest wireless operator in the world. As I sat in the audience with hundreds of others, Carlos Slim, the controlling shareholder and one of the world's richest men, quoted my research, referring to me as "La Whitney." I had large financial institutions like Fidelity Investments asking for my financial models, and when I upgraded or downgraded a stock, the stock price would frequently move several percentage points.

How long does it last?" Said the other customer, a man wearing a tan shirt with little straps that buttoned on top of the shoulders. He looked as if he were comparing all the pros and cons before shelling out $.99. You could see he thought he was pretty shrewd. "It lasts for as long as you live," the manager said slowly. There was a second of silence while we all thought about that. The man in the tan shirt drew his head back, tucking his chin into his neck. His mind was working like a house on fire "What about other people?" He asked. "The wife? The kids?" "They can use your membership as long as you're alive," the manager said, making the distinction clear. "Then what?" The man asked, louder. He was the type who said things like "you get what you pay for" and "there's one born every minute" and was considering every angle. He didn't want to get taken for a ride by his own death. "That's all," the manager said, waving his hands, palms down, like a football referee ruling an extra point no good. "Then they'd have to join for themselves or forfeit the privileges." "Well then, it makes sense," the man said, on top of the situation now, "for the youngest one to join. The one that's likely to live the longest." "I can't argue with that," said the manager. The man chewed his lip while he mentally reviewed his family. Who would go first. Who would survive the longest. He cast his eyes around to all the cassettes as if he'd see one that would answer his question. The woman had not gone away. She had brought along her signed agreement, the one that she paid $25 for. "What is this accident waiver clause?" She asked the manager. "Look," he said, now exhibiting his hands to show they were empty, nothing up his sleeve, "I live in the real world. I'm a small businessman, right? I have to protect my investment, don't I? What would happen if, and I'm not suggesting you'd do this, all right, but some people might, what would happen if you decided to watch one of my movies in the bathtub and a VCR you rented from me fell into the water?" The woman retreated a step. This thought had clearly not occurred to her before.

By now Soros had melded Karl Popper’s ideas with his own knowledge of finance, arriving at a synthesis that he called “reflexivity.” As Popper’s writings suggested, the details of a listed company were too complex for the human mind to understand, so investors relied on guesses and shortcuts that approximated reality. But Soros was also conscious that those shortcuts had the power to change reality as well, since bullish guesses would drive a stock price up, allowing the company to raise capital cheaply and boosting its performance. Because of this feedback loop, certainty was doubly elusive: To begin with, people are incapable of perceiving reality clearly; but on top of that, reality itself is affected by these unclear perceptions, which themselves shift constantly. Soros had arrived at a conclusion that was at odds with the efficient-market view. Academic finance assumes, as a starting point, that rational investors can arrive at an objective valuation of a stock and that when all information is priced in, the market can be said to have attained an efficient equilibrium. To a disciple of Popper, this premise ignored the most elementary limits to cognition.

In fact, for someone in the highest tax bracket, short-term Treasury bills have yielded a negative after-tax real return since 1871, even lower if state and local taxes are taken into account. In contrast, top-bracket taxable investors would have increased their purchasing power in stocks 288-fold over the same period.

With $30 million raised from top-tier investors like Richard Branson and Andreessen Horowitz, Lucas Duplan had one message for the media earlier this year: His startup, Clinkle, was going to be big when it launched. But that’s just about all he would reveal.

Once a bull market gets under way, and once you reach the point where everybody has made money no matter what system he or she followed, a crowd is attracted into the game that is responding not to interest rates and profits but simply to the fact that it seems a mistake to be out of stocks. In effect, these people superimpose an I-can’t-miss-the-party factor on top of the fundamental factors that drive the market. Like Pavlov’s dog, these “investors” learn that when the bell rings—in this case, the one that opens the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 A.M.—they get fed. Through this daily reinforcement, they become convinced that there is a God and that He wants them to get rich.

I’m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to bring Kanish to Mel Odious Sound yesterday. Bringing a Billionheir to a large recording complex full of Producers is like opening a bag of chips at a seagull convention. It wouldn’t be long before every Producer within earshot swooped in to aggressively pitch his latest and greatest pet project, most of which would likely prove unprofitable. Rev is obviously going to pitch a project, and it very well may be something amazing. But as I’ve pointed out, in order for Kanish to make a profit, he would have to pick up half the Publishing—a non-starter for the Rev. He’s not a Songwriting Producer, so he likely doesn’t have a sufficient portion of the Publishing to share. And even if he did, no seasoned Producer is going to give half of their equity in a song in order to basically secure a small loan from an outside investor. There’s no upside. For starters, Kanish has no channels of Distribution beyond Streaming, which is already available to anyone and everyone who wants it, and which is currently only profitable for the Major Labels and the stockholders of the Streaming services themselves. Everyone else is getting screwed. And please don’t quote me the Douchebag Big Tech Billionaires running big Streaming Corporations. They are literally lining their pockets with the would-be earnings of Artists and Songwriters alike. What they claim as fair is anything but. Frankly, I don’t think we should be comfortable with Spotify taking a 30 percent margin off the top, and then disbursing the Tiger’s Share of the remaining 70 percent to the Major Labels who have already negotiated top dollar for access to their catalog. This has resulted in nothing but some remaining scraps trickling down to the tens of thousands of Independent Artists out there who just want to make a living. You can’t make a living off scraps, or even a trickle, for that matter. Mark my words, we are currently witnessing the greatest heist in the annals of the Music Business, and that’s saying something given its history. Can you say Napster? Stunningly, the only place that Songwriters can make sufficient Performance Royalties is radio—a medium that is coming up on its hundred-year anniversary. To make matters worse, the Major Distributors still have radio all locked up, and without airplay, there’s no hit. So even now, more than twenty years into the Internet revolution, the odds of breaking through the artistic cacophony without Major-Label Distribution are impossibly low. So much for the Internet leveling the playing field. At this point, only Congress can solve the problem. And despite the fact that Streaming has been around since the mid-aughts, Congress has done nothing to deal with the issue. Why? Because it’s far cheaper for Big Tech to line the pockets of lobbyists and fund the campaigns of politicians who gladly ignore the issue than it is to pay Artists and Songwriters a fair rate for their work, my friends. Same is it ever was. Just so I’m clear, there is a debate to be had as to how much Songwriters and Artists should be paid for Streaming. A radio Spin can reach millions. A Stream rarely reaches more than a few listeners. Clearly, a new method of calculation is required. But that doesn’t mean that we should just sit by as the Big Tech Douchebags rob an entire generation of royalties all so they can sell their Streaming Corporation for billions down the line. I mean, that is the end game, after all. At which point, profit for the new majority stockholder will be all but impossible. How will anyone get paid then?

As Charlie Munger has said, “I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort almost my entire adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I’ve always underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of incentive superpower.” An example from FedEx is one of his favorite cases in point. As he explains, the integrity of the FedEx system relies heavily on the ability to unload and then quickly reload packages at one central location within an allotted time. Years ago, the company was having a terrible problem getting its workers to get all the boxes off and then back on the planes in time. They tried numerous different things that didn’t work, until someone had the brilliant idea of paying the workers by the shift as opposed to by the hour. Poof, the problem was solved.2 FedEx’s old pay-by-the-hour system rewarded those who took longer to get the job done. They were incentivized to take longer. By switching to pay-by-the-shift, workers were motivated to work faster and without error so they could go home, yet still earn the wages of a full shift. For the workers, finishing early amounted to a higher effective hourly wage. By aligning the business’s interests with the worker’s incentives, FedEx got the outcome it and its workers both desired. The

When it comes to investing, it’s critical not to “force it.” Markets will cycle. There will be times when you too feel “out of step” with the market, just as Buffett did in the late 1960s. You’ll find that during the late bull market mania of the Go-Go years, his standards remained firmly set, while the pressure to perform caused the standards of many of even the best around him to crumble. It’s hard not to cave your principles in at the top of the cycle when your value approach has apparently stopped working and everyone around you seems to be making money easily (that’s why so many people do it). However, it’s more often than not a “buy high, sell low” strategy. Buffett set his plan, established his standards, and then entered the fray, maintaining the courage of his convictions, come what may.

Supercapitalism has triumphed as power has shifted to consumers and investors. They now have more choice than ever before, and can switch ever more easily to better deals. And competition among companies to lure and keep them continues to intensify. This means better and cheaper products, and higher returns. Yet as supercapitalism has triumphed, its negative social consequences have also loomed larger. These include widening inequality as most gains from economic growth go to the very top, reduced job security, instability of or loss of community, environmental degradation, violations of human rights abroad, and a plethora of products and services pandering to our basest desires. These consequences are larger in the United States than in other advanced economies because America has moved deeper into supercapitalism. Other economies, following closely behind, have begun to experience many of the same things. Democracy is the appropriate vehicle for responding to such social consequences. That’s where citizen values are supposed to be expressed, where choices are supposed to be made between what we want for ourselves as consumers and investors, and what we want to achieve together. But the same competition that has fueled supercapitalism has spilled over into the political process. Large companies have hired platoons of lobbyists, lawyers, experts, and public relations specialists, and devoted more and more money to electoral campaigns. The result has been to drown out voices and values of citizens. As all of this has transpired, the old institutions through which citizen values had been expressed in the Not Quite Golden Age—industry-wide labor unions, local citizen-based groups, “corporate statesmen” responding to all stakeholders, and regulatory agencies—have been largely blown away by the gusts of supercapitalism. Instead of guarding democracy against the disturbing side effects of supercapitalism, many reformers have set their sights on changing the behavior of particular companies—extolling them for being socially virtuous or attacking them for being socially irresponsible. The result has been some marginal changes in corporate behavior. But the larger consequence has been to divert the public’s attention from fixing democracy. 1

The point of the story is that even a highly disciplined investor can't see a market bottom any more easily than he can see the top.

They are never worried about ideal bottom prices, or ideal top prices for that matter. They understand a decent average price is key to future investment success. Use

Some public pension plans are responding to the continued disappointing returns. The California Public Sector Retirement System (CalPERS) is often regarded as a thought leader among other pension funds, and with over $300 billion in assets it is one of the largest institutional investors in the world. In September 2014 it announced (CalPERS 2014) the elimination of hedge funds from its portfolio, concluding that the cost of investing wasn't justified by the returns. One interesting disclosure was that in the most recent fiscal year through June 2014, CalPERS had paid $135 million in fees on a $4 billion portfolio that earned 7.1%. The approximately $280 million in investment returns ($4 billion × 7.1%) means that for every $2 in returns, it paid away a third dollar in fees. Of the gross returns (i.e., before fees), two-thirds went to CalPERS and one-third to the hedge fund managers. When you consider that it's possible to invest in equity index funds for less than 0.1%, this division of investment profits between the provider of capital and the managers must have appeared as absurd to CalPERS as it does to everyone else.

You gotta know when to hold em’ and you gotta know when to fold em’!

On January 7, 1973, the New York Times featured an interview with one of the nation’s top financial forecasters, who urged investors to buy stocks without hesitation: “It’s very rare that you can be as unqualifiedly bullish as you can now.” That forecaster was named Alan Greenspan, and it’s very rare that anyone has ever been so unqualifiedly wrong as the future Federal Reserve chairman was that day: 1973 and 1974 turned out to be the worst years for economic growth and the stock market since the Great Depression.

In the weeks and months after Immelt left GE in 2017, a parade of negative stories and embarrassing disclosures revealed major problems that sent the company’s stock into a long decline. Conversations about what happened inevitably shifted to blame, and Immelt was the obvious target. He had spent sixteen years at the top and, regardless of what Welch had left for him, he’d had plenty of time to fix it. But there was plenty of blame to go around. Perhaps most of it should be placed on the board of directors, the independent group that oversees the CEO. Board members claimed to have been unaware of problems and to have gotten bad guidance from external advisers, and they said they didn’t understand how the company went from good to bad seemingly overnight. Some directors had no experience in GE’s business lines, others had trouble staying awake during meetings, and many stumbled away from GE’s collapse wondering, How could we have known? It had been their job to know, however, and their job to ask the hard questions that weren’t fully answered, or were never asked at all. It was their job to oversee management, and it was their job to protect investors from fatal hubris. Still, the path ultimately leads back to Immelt. As chairman, he was also responsible for steering the board. There is no doubt that GE’s size and complexity, which grew exponentially under Immelt, made it difficult or even impossible to manage. The CEO of a company is responsible for its daily functions and for managing its operations, however vast. The chairman guides the board, which is responsible for overseeing management and the CEO. When the board chair and CEO are the same person, the top executive is essentially his own boss. It can only get worse with time if a chairman remakes the board to his own liking. Simply put, it is terrible governance to give so much power to a single person and so little voice to shareholders. That is one reason this governance structure has been slowly fading from corporate America since the Enron era.

a blog titled, “Fat Protocols.” Monegro’s thesis is as follows: The Web is supported by protocols like the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP), the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), and simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), all of which have become standards for routing information around the Internet. However, these protocols are commoditized, in that while they form the backbone of our Internet, they are poorly monetized. Instead, what is monetized is the applications on top of the protocols. These applications have turned into mega-corporations, such as Facebook and Amazon, which rely on the base protocols of the Web and yet capture the vast majority of the value.

20 In 1932, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, lawyer and economics professor, respectively, published The Modern Corporation and Private Property, a highly influential study revealing that top executives of America’s giant companies were not even accountable to their own shareholders but operated the companies “in their own interest, and…divert[ed] a portion of the asset fund to their own uses.”21 The only solution, concluded Berle and Means, was to enlarge the power of all groups within the nation who were affected by the large corporation, including employees and consumers. They envisioned the corporate executive of the future as a professional administrator, dispassionately weighing the claims of investors, employees, consumers, and citizens, and allocating benefits accordingly. “[I]t seems almost essential if the corporate system is to survive—that the ‘control’ of the great corporations should develop into a purely neutral technocracy, balancing a variety of claims by various groups in the community and assigning each a portion of the income stream on the basis of public policy rather than private cupidity.

By having no affiliation with “coin” in its name, Ethereum was moving beyond the idea of currency into the realm of cryptocommodities. While Bitcoin is mostly used to send monetary value between people, Ethereum could be used to send information between programs. It would do so by building a decentralized world computer with a Turing complete programming language.11 Developers could write programs, or applications, that would run on top of this decentralized world computer. Just as Apple builds the hardware and operating system that allows developers to build applications on top, Ethereum was promising to do the same in a distributed and global system. Ether, the native unit, would come into play as follows: Ether is a necessary element—a fuel—for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations. To put it another way, ether is the incentive ensuring that developers write quality applications (wasteful code costs more), and that the network remains healthy (people are compensated for their contributed resources).

The Numbers Game Even Graham would have been startled by the extent to which companies and their accountants pushed the limits of propriety in the past few years. Compensated heavily through stock options, top executives realized that they could become fabulously rich merely by increasing their company’s earnings for just a few years running.1 Hundreds of companies violated the spirit, if not the letter, of accounting principles—turning their financial reports into gibberish, tarting up ugly results with cosmetic fixes, cloaking expenses, or manufacturing earnings out of thin air.

In an ideal world, the intelligent investor would hold stocks only when they are cheap and sell them when they become overpriced, then duck into the bunker of bonds and cash until stocks again become cheap enough to buy. From 1966 through late 2001, one study claimed, $1 held continuously in stocks would have grown to $11.71. But if you had gotten out of stocks right before the five worst days of each year, your original $1 would have grown to $987.12.1 Like most magical market ideas, this one is based on sleight of hand. How, exactly, would you (or anyone) figure out which days will be the worst days—before they arrive? On January 7, 1973, the New York Times featured an interview with one of the nation’s top financial forecasters, who urged investors to buy stocks without hesitation: “It’s very rare that you can be as unqualifiedly bullish as you can now.” That forecaster was named Alan Greenspan, and it’s very rare that anyone has ever been so unqualifiedly wrong as the future Federal Reserve chairman was that day: 1973 and 1974 turned out to be the worst years for economic growth and the stock market since the Great Depression.2 Can professionals time the market any better than Alan Green-span? “I see no reason not to think the majority of the decline is behind us,” declared Kate Leary Lee, president of the market-timing firm of R. M. Leary & Co., on December 3, 2001. “This is when you want to be in the market,” she added, predicting that stocks “look good” for the first quarter of 2002.3 Over the next three months, stocks earned a measly 0.28% return, underperforming cash by 1.5 percentage points. Leary is not alone. A study by two finance professors at Duke University found that if you had followed the recommendations of the best 10% of all market-timing newsletters, you would have earned a 12.6% annualized return from 1991 through 1995. But if you had ignored them and kept your money in a stock index fund, you would have earned 16.4%.

Your chances of selecting the top-performing funds of the future on the basis of their returns in the past are about as high as the odds that Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman will both show up in pink ballet slippers at your next cocktail party. In other words, your chances are not zero—but they’re pretty close. (See sidebar, p. 255.) But there’s good news, too. First of all, understanding why it’s so hard to find a good fund will help you become a more intelligent investor. Second, while past performance is a poor predictor of future returns, there are other factors that you can use to increase your odds of finding a good fund. Finally, a fund can offer excellent value even if it doesn’t beat the market—by providing an economical way to diversify your holdings and by freeing up your time for all the other things you would rather be doing than picking your own stocks.

They shut the door. The best funds often close to new investors—permitting only their existing shareholders to buy more. That stops the feeding frenzy of new buyers who want to pile in at the top and protects the fund from the pains of asset elephantiasis. It’s also a signal that the fund managers are not putting their own wallets ahead of yours. But the closing should occur before—not after—the fund explodes in size. Some companies with an exemplary record of shutting their own gates are Longleaf, Numeric, Oakmark, T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, and Wasatch. They don’t advertise. Just as Plato says in The Republic that the ideal rulers are those who do not want to govern, the best fund managers often behave as if they don’t want your money. They don’t appear constantly on financial television or run ads boasting of their No. 1 returns.

As you can see, the rise and fall of opportunities in the market for distressed debt stems from the interaction of other cycles: in the economy, investor psychology, risk attitudes and the credit market. The economic cycle influences investor psychology, company profitability and the incidence of default. The cycle in psychology contributes to fluctuations in credit market conditions and the desire of investors to lend, buy and sell. The cycle in attitudes toward risk facilitates the issuance of weak bonds at the top and denies capital for refinancing at the bottom. The credit cycle has a profound effect on the availability of refinancing and the degree to which would-be debt issuers are subjected to stringent credit standards. Hopefully it’s clear that multiple underlying cycles have effects on the distressed debt market that are far from discrete and isolated. As I wrote earlier, each of these cycles rises and falls; each causes the others to rise and fall; and each is affected by the rise and fall of others. But the result of all of this is a dramatic cycle in distressed debt opportunities, and one that is subject to explanation.

Companies should buy back their shares when they are cheap—not when they are at or near record highs. Unfortunately, it recently has become all too common for companies to repurchase their stock when it is overpriced. There is no more cynical waste of a company’s cash—since the real purpose of that maneuver is to enable top executives to reap multimillion-dollar paydays by selling their own stock options in the name of “enhancing shareholder value.

Companies should buy back their shares when they are cheap—not when they are at or near record highs. Unfortunately, it recently has become all too common for companies to repurchase their stock when it is overpriced. There is no more cynical waste of a company’s cash—since the real purpose of that maneuver is to enable top executives to reap multimillion-dollar paydays by selling their own stock options in the name of “enhancing shareholder value.” A substantial amount of anecdotal evidence, in fact, suggests that managers who talk about “enhancing shareholder value” seldom do. In investing, as with life in general, ultimate victory usually goes to the doers, not to the talkers.

exposed to real estate every moment of every day:

So, when the market has moved sharply lower in a price waterfall and a bearish trend, supported by masses of volume, this is a buying climax. It is the wholesalers who are buying and the retail traders who are panic selling. A buying climax for us represents an opportunity. Likewise, at the top of a bull trend, where we see sustained high volumes, then this is a selling climax. The wholesalers are selling to the retail traders and investors who are buying on the expectation of the market going to the moon. This is one of the most powerful emotions retail traders face, the fear of missing out or FOMO.

Investor looks for a good working environment such as a suburb or a smaller town. Investors generally outperform Sharks and Flippers over time.

Successful real estate investors profit significantly from experience. The bad experiences help you appreciate the good ones, and that process doesn’t happen overnight.

For investors, in addition to the standard adage of location, location, location, returns depend on having good timing, deep pockets, and sound financing relationships.

Real estate auctions offer benefits to real estate investors, whether they are buying or selling.

Equally important, John Schaub (author of Building Wealth One House at a Time [McGraw-Hill, 2004]) and Jack Miller taught me that single-family rental houses are the best investment for the average investor because houses are so easy to buy, finance, manage, and profitably sell.

The best advice he gave me was simply to be in the real estate market as an investor and to believe in the market.

In 1982, his biggest investment was Treasury bonds; right after that, he made Chrysler his top holding, even though most experts expected the automaker to go bankrupt; then, in 1986, Lynch put almost 20% of Fidelity Magellan in foreign stocks like Honda, Norsk Hydro, and Volvo. So, before you buy a U.S. stock fund, compare the holdings listed in its latest report against the roster of the S & P 500 index; if they look like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, shop for another fund.7

anyone else who has an ear to the ground about what is happening in a particular market or submarket. When talking to real estate agents, introduce yourself as an interested buyer/investor and ask to be referred to the top broker at the firm. Take that person to lunch–get the inside scoop on the local economy, potential deals, and what’s in the pipeline in general. They will know things that you won’t be able to find online! Finally, check out the submarket in person. Online research is important, but there is no substitute for feet on the ground.

To explain how a dApp works, we’ll use an example from the company Etherisc, which created a dApp for flight insurance to a well-known Ethereum conference. This flight insurance was purchased by 31 of the attendees.23 Figure 5.1 shows a simplified diagram. Using Ethereum, developers can mimic insurance pools with strings of conditional transactions. Open sourcing this process and running it on top of Ethereum’s world computer allows everyday investors to put their capital in an insurance pool to earn returns from the purchasers of insurance premiums that are looking for coverage from certain events. Everyone trusts the system because it runs in the open and is automated by code.

Since the launch of Ethereum, a near endless stream of dApps have been released to run on it, many of which have their own native unit. We refer to many of these dApp native units as cryptotokens, while others refer to them as appcoins. A dApp with its own native cryptotoken will use ether as a cryptocommodity to pay the Ethereum network to process certain dApp transactions. While many dApps use a cryptotoken, the native units of some dApps should be classified as a cryptocommodity layered on top of Ethereum,

We Do Not Have a Trade Deficit. We have a capital surplus. ... Trade deficits are partly a question of consumer preference — American consumers really do like Hondas more than Japanese consumers like Buicks — but they are not mainly a question of consumer preference. They are mainly a question of investor preference — and investors prefer the United States, which is why there is almost twice as much foreign direct investment in the United States as in China, even though China’s economy has grown at a much faster rate over the past 20 years. ... Trade deficits don’t happen because the wily Japanese juke us on trade policy. They happen because intelligent people holding a fistful of dollars very often decide to forgo the consumption of American consumer goods in order to invest in American assets. In economics terms, what this means is that the trade deficit is a mirror image of the capital surplus. ... The trade deficit might remain unchanged, but there would be a large cost attached: Without that foreign investment capital flowing into the United States, money gets more expensive. That means entrepreneurs have a harder time raising capital. ... One of the problems, I suspect, is that people hear the word “deficit” and they think of the trade deficit as being like the budget deficit, i.e. a mounting debt that one day will have to be paid. It is something closer to the opposite: We get more stuff in return for the stuff we sell, and we get cheap investment capital on top of that. Foreigners get access to a dynamic economy with a stable government (miraculously stable, considering the jackasses in charge of it) and a stable currency. Everybody benefits.

There's a saying on Wall Street that certain investments are sold, not bought, in that they require a salesman to push them on a willing investor rather than the buyer actively seeking them out. This would certainly apply to non-traded REITS. Because the first question any investor, or for that matter well-intentioned advisor, should ask before considering non-traded REITs is how the sector is likely to perform going forward. Asset allocation, the choice of how much an investor should put in stocks, investment grade bonds, REITs, high-yield bonds, commodities, or any other asset class generally drives 80% to 90% of the investor's overall return.

Business Plan Writers If you need a business plan in less than a week, our consulting service can help! Our business plan consultants will create a business strategy that will impress your investors. We looked at all the best business plan writing services and compared their features and pricing. Here is our in depth comparison and recommendations. A business plan writing service is a team of business experts that take your ideas & numbers, combine it with some of their own research and produce a professional, well-formatted business plan. We looked at the 3 top business plan writing services and compared their features and pricing. From start-up guidance to operations consulting, your company can become more successful with the support of one of our business consultants. First, let our team learn more about your business and listen to your needs. Then, we’ll identify key areas of opportunity, and help you to implement the right business plan and strategy for the growth of your company. It was a good startup. It had a good idea and, much more important, a market window, differentiation and experience to make it happen. One of my first engagements in business planning was as business plan consultant to a startup with three experienced founders. I met with them several times, listened always, and did their business plan. I built the financial model, wrote the text, and produced the document as a business plan document. But I wasn’t part of the team.

Jamie likes to talk to people. He wants to know them and what they think. He believes that accurate information is essential for everyone: investors, employees, newspaper reporters.

Dimon was in his best Warren Buffett–inspired investor communication style: full, open disclosure, underscoring the risks involved, but also articulating the philosophy and reasons behind his decisions.

Do Things That Don’t Scale” taught me the importance of the ‘dirty work’ startups have to accomplish in the early days, like focusing on a deliberately narrow market to test the product or going out of their way to acquire users, and make them happy with insane attention-to-detail as if they’re a consultant with only one client. These are just three of the 174 essays currently on Paul’s site. There are a few resources that summarize the content or present a “Top 10,” but at this stage I think the best move is to read the above blogs and a few other articles where the title catches your eye.

Chambers et al. conclude that Keynes had no skill as a market timer. By then, however, the man who had started out as a top-down speculator relying upon his “superior knowledge” to forecast the macroeconomic climate, was behaving more like a bottom-up, fundamental investor who sought solid, dividend-paying stocks with good long-term prospects. His gains came from taking large positions in those securities that had financial statement sheets he could understand, and sold products or services he believed he could assess objectively.

As we thought about what would make us both better and different, two core ideas greatly influenced our thinking: First, technical founders are the best people to run technology companies. All of the long-lasting technology companies that we admired—Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook—had been run by their founders. More specifically, the innovator was running the company. Second, it was incredibly difficult for technical founders to learn to become CEOs while building their companies. I was a testament to that. But, most venture capital firms were better designed to replace the founder than to help the founder grow and succeed. Marc and I thought that if we created a firm specifically designed to help technical founders run their own companies, we could develop a reputation and a brand that might vault us into the top tier of venture capital firms despite having no track record. We identified two key deficits that a founder CEO had when compared with a professional CEO: 1. The CEO skill set Managing executives, organizational design, running sales organizations and the like were all important skills that technical founders lacked. 2. The CEO network Professional CEOs knew lots of executives, potential customers and partners, people in the press, investors, and other important business connections. Technical founders, on the other hand, knew some good engineers and how to program.

Getting to fifty-fifty is incredibly complex and nuanced, requiring many detailed solutions that will take decades to fully play out. To accelerate the process, change needs to start at the top. Like Stewart Butterfield, CEOs need to make hiring and retaining women an explicit priority. In addition, here is the bare minimum of what we can do at an individual and a systemic level: First of all, people, be nice to each other. Treat one another with respect and dignity, including those of the opposite sex.That should be pretty simple. Don’t enable assholes. Stop making excuses for bad behavior, or ignoring it. CEOs must embrace and champion the need to reach a fair representation of gender within their companies, and develop a comprehensive plan to get there. Be long-term focused, not short-term. It may take three weeks to find a white man for the job, but three months to find a woman. Those three months could save three years of playing catch-up in the future. Invest in not just diversity but inclusion. Even if your company is small, everything counts. And take the time to educate your employees about why this is important. Companies need to appoint more women to their boards. And boards need to hold company leadership to account to get to fifty-fifty in their employee ranks, starting with company executives. Venture capital firms need to hire more women partners, and limited partners should pressure them to do so and, at the very least, ask them what their plans around diversity are. Investors, both men and women, need to start funding more women and diverse teams, period. LPs need to fund more women VCs, who can establish new firms with new cultural norms. Stop funding partnerships that look and act the same. Most important, stop blaming everybody else for the problem or pretending that it is too hard for us to solve. It’s time to look in the mirror. This is an industry, after all, that prides itself on disruption and revolutionary new ways of thinking. Let’s put that spirit of innovation and embrace of radical change to good use. Seeing a more inclusive workforce in Silicon Valley will encourage more girls and women studying computer science now.

Generally the causes of the top-reversal fall into a few categories: The income from selling goods and services to foreigners drops (e.g., the currency has risen to a point where it’s made the country’s exports expensive; commodity-exporting countries may suffer from a fall in commodity prices). The costs of items bought from abroad or the cost of borrowing rises. Declines in capital flows coming into the country (e.g., foreign investors reduce their net lending or net investment into the country). This occurs because: The unsustainable pace naturally slows, Something leads to greater worries about economic or political conditions, or A tightening of monetary policy in the local currency and/or in the currency those debts are denominated in (or in some cases, tightening abroad creates pressure for foreign capital to pull out of the country). A country’s own citizens or companies want to get their money out of their country/currency.

This is the Rocketship Growth Rate—the precise pace at which a startup must grow to break out. How do you calculate this rate of growth? First, by setting a goal of exceeding a billion dollars of valuation—thus being in a position to achieve an IPO—and working backward. Hitting a $1 billion valuation generally requires at least $100 million in top-line recurring revenue annually, based on the rough market multiple of 10x revenue. You’d want to hit that in 7–10 years, to sustain the engagement of the key employees and also reward investors who often work in decade-long time cycles. These two goals—revenue and time—work together to create an overall constraint. Neeraj Agarwal, a venture capitalist and investor in B2B companies, first calculated this growth rate by arguing that SaaS companies in particular need to follow a precise path to reach these numbers:64 Establish great product-market fit Get to $2 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) Triple to $6 million in ARR Triple to $18 million Double to $36 million Double to $72 million Double to $144 million SaaS companies like Marketo, Netsuite, Workday, Salesforce, Zendesk, and others have all roughly followed this curve. And the rough timing makes sense. The first phase, in which the team initially gets to product/market fit, takes 1–3 years. Add on the time to reach the rest of the growth milestones, and the entire process might take 6–9 years. Of course, after year 10, the company might still be growing quickly, though it’s more common for it to be growing 50 percent annualized rather than doubling. The argument is that products with network effects both can see higher growth rates as they tap into the various network forces I’ve discussed, and can compound these growth rates for a longer period of time—and looking at the data, I think that’s generally true.

David versus Goliath Asymmetry lies at the heart of network-based competition. The larger or smaller network will be at different stages of the Cold Start framework and, as such, will gravitate toward a different set of levers. The giant is often fighting gravitational pull as its network grows and saturates the market. To combat these negative forces, it must add new use cases, introduce the product to new audiences, all while making sure it’s generating a profit. The upstart, on the other hand, is trying to solve the Cold Start Problem, and often starts with a niche. A new startup has the luxury of placing less emphasis on profitability and might instead focus on top-line growth, subsidizing the market to grow its network. When they encounter each other in the market, it becomes natural that their competitive moves reflect their different goals and resources. Startups have fewer resources—capital, employees, distribution—but have important advantages in the context of building new networks: speed and a lack of sacred cows. A new startup looking to compete against Zoom might try a more specific use case, like events, and if that doesn’t work, they can quickly pivot and try something else, like corporate education classes. Startups like YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and many other products have similar stories, and went through an incubation phase as the product was refined and an initial network was built. Trying and failing many times is part of the startup journey—it only takes the discovery of one atomic network to get into the market. With that, a startup is often able to start the next leg of the journey, often with more investment and resources to support them. Contrast that to a larger company, which has obvious advantages in resources, manpower, and existing product lines. But there are real disadvantages, too: it’s much harder to solve the Cold Start Problem with a slower pace of execution, risk aversion, and a “strategy tax” that requires new products to align to the existing business. Something seems to happen when companies grow to tens of thousands of employees—they inevitably create rigorous processes for everything, including planning cycles, performance reviews, and so on. This helps teams focus, but it also creates a harder environment for entrepreneurial risk-taking. I saw this firsthand at Uber, whose entrepreneurial culture shifted in its later years toward profitability and coordinating the efforts of tens of thousands. This made it much harder to start new initiatives—for better and worse. When David and Goliath meet in the market—and often it’s one Goliath and many investor-funded Davids at once—the resulting moves and countermoves are fascinating. Now that I have laid down some of the theoretical foundation for how competition fits into Cold Start Theory, let me describe and unpack some of the most powerful moves in the network-versus-network playbook.

MILF Token: What Is It and What Are the Prospects? Why MILF symbols? Whoever had actually the intense suggestion of producing a MILF token has actually located a cutting-edge means of touching into 2 distinctive yet similarly eye-catching streams. On the one hand, here's a fresh cryptocurrency including distinctively collectible characters, with evidence of possession saved in a blockchain. On the various other hand, when it concerns those characters, it likewise ventures a fixation among several songs in the very early 21st-century: fully grown, sexually knowledgeable ladies looking for daring times with their suitors. Any kind of speculator wanting to explore the idea behind these extravagant as well as attractive characters can conveniently acquaint themselves with a few of the very best sites concentrating on dating MILFs. These systems provide an algorithm-based solution, where brand-new consumers can surely join, as well as the details offered throughout this enrollment procedure - inspirations, kind of MILF they are brought in to, and so on. - can surely be as compared to the information they currently carry submit. This way, the liaison can surely be easily organized without the individual enquiring also needing to make up a candid message. The computer system software application will certainly give a shortlist of ideal dating prospects. Comparable character-driven symbols MILF symbols are top on from formerly prominent characters that have actually gripped the focus of crypto investors, such as CryptoPunks. These were a collection of 10,000 characters, each distinct, that exposed evidence of possession on the Ethereum blockchain. MILF symbols operate similarly. Due to the fact that no 2 characters are alike, each token can surely ended up being the authorities residential building of a solitary proprietor on this blockchain. Those 10,000 CryptoPunk symbols were quickly purchased, immediately providing the specific characters boosted worth. The presumption is that the MILF symbols will certainly go similarly, so any individual wanting to obtain their practical a certain MILF personality will certainly need to buy this through the market-place that's likewise installed in the Ethereum blockchain. Presently, the most affordable offered rate for MILF symbols is $0.00004078, standing for a 0.61% increase over the previous 24-hour. Shade coding Generally, these characters will certainly have actually a condition when they show up in the crypto markets. Where the CrytoPunks are worried, a blue history suggested that punk was except sale, neither exist energetic quotes. Punks that were offered offer for sale would certainly have actually a red history. Those with an energetic quote would certainly have actually a purple history. MILFs have actually built such a solid track record for desirability, their incorporation as

Bloomberg’s Top 25 Angel Investors and one of Time’s Top 25 Most Influential People on the Web. He has a popular monthly newsletter called The Journal.

Readers of this book, however intelligent and knowing, could scarcely expect to do a better job of portfolio selection than the top analysts of the country. But if it is true that a fairly large segment of the stock market is often discriminated against or entirely neglected in the standard analytical selections, then the intelligent investor may be in a position to profit from the resultant undervaluations.

Show me an incumbent bigco failing to adapt to change, I’ll show you top execs paid huge cash compensation for quarterly and annual goals.” “Every billionaire suffers from the same problem. Nobody around them ever says, ‘Hey, that stupid idea you just had is really stupid.’” “‘Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.’—Peter Lynch

My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.” “To do original work: It’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few other people believe.” “Andy Grove had the answer: For every metric, there should be another ‘paired’ metric that addresses adverse consequences of the first metric.” “Show me an incumbent bigco failing to adapt to change, I’ll show you top execs paid huge cash compensation for quarterly and annual goals.” “Every billionaire suffers from the same problem. Nobody around them ever says, ‘Hey, that stupid idea you just had is really stupid.’” “‘Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.’—Peter Lynch

We set our heart on winning the peak of Mount Everest. We consider only being on top of the world and waving to the land is a success. But every step you need to take to be at the peak is a tiny success, aren’t they? So, to be on the peak of Mount Everest, you need to clinch approximately 85,238 tiny successes before you finally achieve the last one (the biggest success), the final step on the top. Aren’t each one is equally crucial? A success deemed big is a sum of many smaller ones. A success considered prodigious is a sum of many crucial ones.

Are you searching and looking to invest in plots in Chennai? There are many options of Plot for sale in Chennai. But investing in plots and buying plots to build a house are two different things! People always craze Real Estate as an Investment Option. In same the way, plots or lands hold the top priority on Real estate investment categories. So, it is mandated for every investor to look at the key parameters to buy lands or plots. In this article, It is explained easy investment options for how to identify and buy a plot for investment to eventually meet a life goal.

The venture capitalist investor, the private equity investor, the power player’s power player will beg to get in on a potential unicorn, going-through-the-roof, start-up company.

It’s clear to me that American families increasingly want the option to leave their cars at home once they get back from a day’s work. Accordingly, “walk scores” are an increasingly important benchmark to help evaluate the desirability of new locations. The twenty-first century is likely to result

Monica Zent is an experienced entrepreneur, investor, businesswoman, and trusted legal advisor to leading global bMonica Zent is an experienced entrepreneur, investor, businesswoman, and trusted legal advisor to leading global brands, over a period that spans decades. Her most recent venture is the founder and CEO of Foxwordy Inc. She is also the founder of ZentLaw, one of the nation's top alternative law firms. Zent is an investor in real estate & startups and dedicates her time and talent to various charitable causes. She is a diversity and inclusion advocate, inspiring all people to pursue their dreams. rands, over a period that spans decades. Her most recent venture is the founder and CEO of Foxwordy Inc. She is also the founder of ZentLaw, one of the nation’s top alternative law firms. Zent is an investor in real estate & startups and dedicates her time and talent to various charitable causes. She is a diversity and inclusion advocate, inspiring all people to pursue their dreams.

Negotiating The only way you’ll be able to negotiate is if you have other term sheets in hand. That’s why it’s important to keep your process tight. You can negotiate with a top investor by saying something along the lines of “You’re my top pick, but I have other offers at ____. If you can match/beat that, I’ll go with you.” But remember to come back to two crucial principles: 1. Relationships trump metrics. You want to find, work with, and get support from investors who are there for the right reasons and who value what you’re trying to build. 2. Momentum is everything. The relationship building is the groundwork. But, you still have to create a compelling event or a “moment.” And when the process starts, you have to drive urgency.

The Queen and I attended many of the sales calls in person, to explain these complexities. I traveled to Boston to meet with some of the top U.S. fund managers, including the managers of two of the largest emerging markets mutual funds in the world, Rob Citrone, portfolio manager at Fidelity Investments, and Mark Siegel, vice president and head of emerging markets at Putnam Investment Management. Both of them, as well as dozens of other fund managers, gave BIDS a big thumbs down. The trade was too complicated, and the fees we were charging were too large. The BIDS deal ended a failure, although it probably would have been worse if Scarecrow had been involved throughout. On the one hand, we were only able to sell $21 million of BIDS in total, mostly because we couldn’t pique the interest of U.S. investors. On the other hand, we were able to charge such an enormous fee on the BIDS we actually sold that the group still grossed half a million dollars in profits.

Since the Firm’s IPO, the Founder and the partners have realized that the listed market seems to value more highly the stable, recurring management fees that the Firm brings in, come rain or shine—the two percent—over the larger, supposedly more volatile performance fees that crystallize when investment gains are monetized—the twenty percent. The stock price is largely driven by a regular stream of management fees under long-term contracts, and as assets under management grow for the Firm, the stock’s attractiveness to public market investors increases because this fee pile grows alongside the assets. Of course, there is a strong track record of delivering performance fees on top, because the funds perform well, but these are incremental to the equity story; they do not underpin it. For the stock market, the Two is mission-critical. The Twenty is important, but it is not taken for granted.

In contrast, a new vehicle that brings in cash on the explicit basis that it may be invested in perpetuity could “structure away” this issue, and the associated management fees would be payable for as long as the firm and the investor are in business. And, of course, there would be performance-related fees on top, too. There will be some variation of Two and Twenty still payable—but with investors’ money locked up under management by the firm. These investment platforms are known as “permanent capital” or “perpetual capital” and they are often publicly listed.

The fact is that one person’s growth stock is another’s value stock. Recently, the investment data company Lipper has reported that Citigroup, AIG and IBM are among the top 15 mutual fund holdings in both the large company “value” and “growth” categories. This brings us to our next point, which perhaps best explains why Marathon should never be labelled as a pure value investor. Our capital cycle process examines the effects of the creative and destructive forces of capitalism over time. A growth stock usually becomes a value stock after excess capital, lured in by large current profitability, brings about a decline in returns. When this becomes extreme, as was the case during the technology bubble, the resultant bust can turn growth stocks into value stocks almost overnight. The telecoms sector provides

Once again, I listened as people told me I was nuts. Emerging markets were largely considered untouchable by foreign investors at the time. They were still under the shadow of loan defaults from the 1980s, and Mexico’s recent Tequila Crisis (the devaluation of the peso) had triggered widespread currency devaluation across Latin America. To top it off, many emerging market countries were reeling from the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and Russia’s default in 1998. Emerging markets at the time were not for the faint of heart. For me, of course, that presented an environment with no competition for assets.

I needed to be more conscious of the extent to which the life circumstances of top executives can affect their decision making and their ability to manage the business. If I have even a mild argument with my wife, it can put me out of sorts for the day, affecting both my mood and my ability to make intelligent decisions. So I can only imagine how hard it would be to go through a contentious divorce. Indeed, this is just one example of the many life events that can knock an executive off track:

With the limited float and the public investor’s insatiable demand for anything electronic, Langone’s company priced the shares at $16.50 per share—a full 118 times EDS’s earnings at the time. Perot emerged at the end of the offering with a net worth close to $200 million on paper. Fortune declared him “the fastest richest Texan ever.” Within two years, his paper net worth would top $1.5 billion, making him technology’s first billionaire.

Jordan worked at Blackstone, running their internal venture portfolio. Because venture is usually tiny compared to the types of deals a giant like Blackstone usually funds, Jordan was frustrated by the lack of internal interest in his work. He was ready to take a risk, even if it meant being the head of investments at a firm that didn’t even exist yet. That helped. But we needed more. Matt Yale had been our client at Tusk Strategies. Matt was running government relations, investor relations, and public relations for Laureate, the world’s largest higher-education company with over a million students on campuses around the world. Matt and I knew each other in Chicago, he had backed Obama for president, and spent two and a half years at the U.S. Department of Education as one of Arne Duncan’s top aides and advisers.

As its name suggests, Tri-Party Repo is an agreement between three parties. There’s the seller of the securities (the securities dealer), the buyer of the securities (cash investor), and the clearing bank (the bank that holds both the securities and the cash). The cash investor liked the transaction because they have better security. They knew the securities were priced and margined correctly by the clearing bank. For the securities dealer, Tri-Party minimized settlements and ticket processing. It gave them more time to allocate collateral throughout the day, and it made it easier to finance smaller pieces. The clearing bank did most of the work. They handled the risk management, pricing the collateral, and accommodated collateral substitutions. They managed the settlement risk, cleared the trades, provided valuation, and the position reporting. And, on top of that, they get paid a fee. Sounds like everyone wins! When there was a problem with HIC Repo, the market figured out a way to reduce investor risk. It brought cash investors back to the Repo market.

It is often said that the masses are right in the middle and wrong at the extremes. In other words, the majority of investors are typically too bullish at the top and too bearish at the bottom.

Governments are good at cutting off the heads of centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.”24 It’s clear from this quote that Satoshi was not creating Bitcoin to slip seamlessly into the existing governmental and financial system, but instead to be an alternative system free of top-down control, governed by the decentralized masses.

I can picture purchasing a product, such as a vehicle, a bicycle, or even grocery items, and seeing the emissions to produce the item and transport it to its location on its product tag, or by scanning its bar code. Items with top quartile emissions or high ESG performance for the category may have a different color-coded tag. The price tag will become a product tag and information about the item and the producer would be available in its online description,

What I found most interesting about Session C was the unique window it provided the CEO into the business. It was "boundaryless" before the word came into favor as a GE company value. It was functionally agnostic and part of a more extensive system managed by the top executive with ties to the board of directors, corporate and operating executives, and various management levels. No one could claim outright ownership for it, but everyone was intimately involved.

As we approached our fifth small hill and were well into the Powerline Road, fatigue started to take hold. Just below the crest, my legs turned heavy, and I was losing ground. In the moment before I was going to concede, I felt something on the small of my back. My Italian friend has timed his reach perfectly and was guiding me to the top. It turns out that those 10 seconds of help were all I needed to finish with the pack. As we gathered, post-ride, and mingled around the cars, I thanked my ride saver for the assistance. After denying he had any role a few times, he smiled and said, "Sometimes, a helping hand is all we need to improve.

Understanding Financial Risks and Companies Mitigate them? Financial risks are the possible threats, losses and debts corporations face during setting up policies and seeking new business opportunities. Financial risks lead to negative implications for the corporations that can lead to loss of financial assets, liabilities and capital. Mitigation of risks and their avoidance in the early stages of product deployment, strategy-planning and other vital phases is top-priority for financial advisors and managers. Here's how to mitigate risks in financial corporates:- ● Keeping track of Business Operations Evaluating existing business operations in the corporations will provide a holistic view of the movement of cash-flows, utilisation of financial assets, and avoiding debts and losses. ● Stocking up Emergency Funds Just as families maintain an emergency fund for dealing with uncertainties, the same goes for large corporates. Coping with uncertainty such as the ongoing pandemic is a valuable lesson that has taught businesses to maintain emergency funds to avoid economic lapses. ● Taking Data-Backed Decisions Senior financial advisors and managers must take well-reformed decisions backed by data insights. Data-based technologies such as data analytics, science, and others provide resourceful insights about various economic activities and help single out the anomalies and avoid risks. Enrolling for a course in finance through a reputed university can help young aspiring financial risk advisors understand different ways of mitigating risks and threats. The IIM risk management course provides meaningful insights into the other risks involved in corporations. What are the Financial Risks Involved in Corporations? Amongst the several roles and responsibilities undertaken by the financial management sector, identifying and analysing the volatile financial risks. Financial risk management is the pinnacle of the financial world and incorporates the following risks:- ● Market Risk Market risk refers to the threats that emerge due to corporational work-flows, operational setup and work-systems. Various financial risks include- an economic recession, interest rate fluctuations, natural calamities and others. Market risks are also known as "systematic risk" and need to be dealt with appropriately. When there are significant changes in market rates, these risks emerge and lead to economic losses. ● Credit Risk Credit risk is amongst the common threats that organisations face in the current financial scenarios. This risk emerges when a corporation provides credit to its borrower, and there are lapses while receiving owned principal and interest. Credit risk arises when a borrower falters to make the payment owed to them. ● Liquidity Risk Liquidity risk crops up when investors, business ventures and large organisations cannot meet their debt compulsions in the short run. Liquidity risk emerges when a particular financial asset, security or economic proposition can't be traded in the market. ● Operational Risk Operational risk arises due to financial losses resulting from employee's mistakes, failures in implementing policies, reforms and other procedures. Key Takeaway The various financial risks discussed above help professionals learn the different risks, threats and losses. Enrolling for a course in finance assists learners understand the different risks. Moreover, pursuing the IIM risk management course can expose professionals to the scope of international financial management in India and other key concepts.

At Tops Head and shoulders (H&S) are probably the most reliable of all chart patterns.

What is an IDO? How can IDO be attacked? The IDO is portrayed as the replacement for fundraising models like ICO, STO, and IEO as it provides greater liquidity for crypto assets and more fast, transparent, and equitable trading. IDO is one of many inventive ways for raising funds. However,the Initial Coin Offering (ICO), was the first method of raising funds in the cryptocurrency industry and it caused a lot of controversy in 2017. Just about any ICO project could offer huge returns, and many did. Many ICO ventures turned out to be illusions or, worse, scams in an effort to make easy money. They also damaged the reputation of the cryptocurrency market and discouraged many potential new investors from joining. To know more about ICO read-Evaluating ICOs: Importance of Soft Cap and Hard Cap Decentralized finance (DeFi) uses several fundraising strategies to try to solve this issue. The IDO model is one such example. Crypto investors now have access to a different, more inclusive crowdfunding model due to DEXs. However, hacking assaults can cause significant financial and reputational harm during the Initial Dex Offerings (IDOs). This is why token issuers should prioritize protection against these sorts of assaults. Preventative interventions allow for the reduction of the hazards associated with these assaults. In order to understand how these hacking attacks pose a risk to an IDO's reputation, we must first understand how an IDO works. How does an IDO work? The decentralized exchange is used by an IDO to carry out the token sale. The DEX receives tokens from a cryptocurrency project, customers deposit money through the platform, and DEX handles the ultimate distribution and transfer. The blockchain's smart contracts enable this automated operation. The IDO regulations follow these standard methods. After the screening process, they approve a project to run on an IDO, and after they issue a supply of tokens for a fixed price, the users can lock their money in exchange for these tokens. To be included in the investor whitelist, you must do marketing activities, or you can provide your wallet address.

Third, the idea that venture capitalists get into deals on the strength of their brands can be exaggerated. A deal seen by a partner at Sequoia will also be seen by rivals at other firms: in a fragmented cottage industry, there is no lack of competition. Often, winning the deal depends on skill as much as brand: it’s about understanding the business model well enough to impress the entrepreneur; it’s about judging what valuation might be reasonable. One careful tally concluded that new or emerging venture partnerships capture around half the gains in the top deals, and there are myriad examples of famous VCs having a chance to invest and then flubbing it.[6] Andreessen Horowitz passed on Uber. Its brand could not save it. Peter Thiel was an early investor in Stripe. He lacked the conviction to invest as much as Sequoia. As to the idea that branded venture partnerships have the “privilege” of participating in supposedly less risky late-stage investment rounds, this depends from deal to deal. A unicorn’s momentum usually translates into an extremely high price for its shares. In the cases of Uber and especially WeWork, some late-stage investors lost millions. Fourth, the anti-skill thesis underplays venture capitalists’ contributions to portfolio companies. Admittedly, these contributions can be difficult to pin down. Starting with Arthur Rock, who chaired the board of Intel for thirty-three years, most venture capitalists have avoided the limelight. They are the coaches, not the athletes. But this book has excavated multiple cases in which VC coaching made all the difference. Don Valentine rescued Atari and then Cisco from chaos. Peter Barris of NEA saw how UUNET could become the new GE Information Services. John Doerr persuaded the Googlers to work with Eric Schmidt. Ben Horowitz steered Nicira and Okta through their formative moments. To be sure, stories of venture capitalists guiding portfolio companies may exaggerate VCs’ importance: in at least some of these cases, the founders might have solved their own problems without advice from their investors. But quantitative research suggests that venture capitalists do make a positive impact: studies repeatedly find that startups backed by high-quality VCs are more likely to succeed than others.[7] A quirky contribution to this literature looks at what happens when airline routes make it easier for a venture capitalist to visit a startup. When the trip becomes simpler, the startup performs better.[8]

Market for Non-Fungible-Tokens (NFTs) has grown significantly and enabled several ways to earn through them. However, with the rise of NFT scams, main problem has arisen in determining the value of an NFT. Knowing the value of an NFT can be helpful in many ways. Here is what you should know about investing in NFTs, determining their worth, and considering several factors that will help you make a profit from NFTs. Understand the pricing of an NFT There is no defined model to evaluate the value of an NFT. In a basic sense, you cannot assess NFTs using the same parameters used to evaluate properties or traditional investment vehicles like shares. Last buyer's payment often provides some indication of the worth. However, with NFTs, it can be challenging to predict what the next buyer will pay based on their predictions. Most buyers depend on guesswork in their bids because they lack the expertise required to estimate the value of NFTs logically. The value of NFTs is influenced over time by a judgment over which both buyers and sellers may have no control. For instance, a piece of NFT art could be in great demand for a period because purchasers believe it to be unique and that its value will rise shortly. Then, suddenly, they may discover that the digital image is publicly available on the Internet and that the NFT would no longer have any clients. So, to avoid these scams, investors should consider these factors to determine the price of an NFT they want to buy or sell. Factors influencing the value of NFTs Artist’s Fame The reputation of the artist who created an NFT is the first element that affects its worth. NFTs produced by well-known or particularly well-liked up-and-coming artists will be valued higher than those produced by lesser-known artists. For example, the value of an old painting by Pablo Picasso will differ by miles from the value of even an impressionist painting by a contemporary street artist. That's just how the art business operates. And with context to NFTs, nothing has changed. Ownership History An NFT's value is highly influenced by the issuer's and past owners' identities. The historical value of tokens created by well-known individuals or businesses is significant. By collaborating with individuals or businesses having a high brand value to issue the NFTs, you can improve the value proposition of the NFT. Another way to get popularity is to resell NFTs already owned by prominent individuals. With the use of a straightforward tracking interface, marketplaces and sellers can assist buyers in learning more about prior NFT owners. Buyers will benefit from seeing the names of investors who profited significantly from NFT trading. Rarity The price of an NFT is strongly correlated with how scarce it is considered to be and how rare it is. Famous artists' original works of art and high-calibre celebrities' tokens are qualified as rare NFTs. NFTs have a significant amount of worth due to their rarity. Any asset with a limited supply has a higher intrinsic value and gives its owner a sense of true uniqueness. In the NFT art market, sellers can demand top pay for this feeling. Liquidity If an asset can be sold when needed without suffering a significant loss in value, it is considered to be liquid. If you view NFT art as an investment rather than a long-term digital collectable, liquidity is a top concern. High liquidity increases an NFT's value, especially for these types of investments. Liquidity can be unpredictable since it is determined by attractiveness and what a buyer is prepared to pay and the characteristics that change as the market does. Look at its recent trading volume to get an indication of what you might expect in terms of NFT liquidity. Systems will be established to maintain asset liquidity as the NFT market expands.

Is China repeating the Lehman crash ? With more stellar listings of IPOs and many various new cryptos popping out of the blue with their interesting mechanism, and catchy names and their gains showing double, triple, and maybe quadruple the price, it's only understandable why…. Evergrande, a Chinese real estate developer, is having problems, which has led to comparisons to Lehman Brothers' collapse in 2008. Analysts don't believe that China's more tightly regulated financial system is about to experience a repeat of the outbreak that followed Lehman's collapse. But there is a significant connection between the two incidents: When a long-lasting mortgage bubble burst, Lehman failed. Evergrande is having the same trouble because China is attempting to move away from an economic growth model that greatly relies on debt, making the system more empty. Read the latest news about China’s investment and major players movements and its crypto related adversaries. China is not unique in its love of debt, but unlike the United States, it does not borrow to lower taxes or pay for social transfers. Instead, it makes investments in construction, infrastructure, and real estate. As long as the investment actually increases national productivity, the model makes sense. The debt followed by the property boom—and, as a result, its economic growth—has long been a source of concern for long-term investors. They aren’t alone: Chinese policymakers have been trying to tackle the debt in its economy—a reason they were much more restrained in providing Covid-related stimulus in 2020 and the reason for the property crackdown that sparked the current slump.

Venture capitalists and investors have bought into the media-driven narrative that younger people are more likely to build great companies. Vinod Khosla, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and venture capitalist, said, “People under 35 are the people who make change happen . . . people over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.” Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, the famous start-up accelerator, said that, when a founder is over the age of thirty-two, investors “start to be a little skeptical.” Zuckerberg himself famously said, with his characteristic absence of tact, “Young people are just smarter.” But, it turns out, when it comes to age, the entrepreneurs we learn about in the media are not representative. In a pathbreaking study, a team of economists—Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin F. Jones, J. Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda (henceforth referred to as AJKM)—analyzed the age of the founder of every business created in the United States between the years 2007 and 2014. Their study included some 2.7 million entrepreneurs, a far broader and more representative sample than the dozens featured in business magazines. The researchers found that the average age of a business founder in the United States is 41.9 years old—in other words, more than a decade older than the average age of founders featured in the media. And older people don’t just start businesses more than many of us realize; they also succeed at creating highly profitable businesses more often than their younger peers do. AJKM used various metrics of success for a business, including staying in business for longer and ranking among the top firms in revenue and employees. They discovered that older founders consistently had higher probabilities of success, at least until the age of sixty.

Son arrived at Yahoo’s office looking as slight and uncommanding as ever. But he brought a bazooka. In a bid without precedent in the history of the Valley, he proposed to invest fully $100 million in Yahoo. In return he wanted an additional 30 percent of the company. Son’s bid implied that Yahoo’s value had shot up eight times since his investment four months earlier. But the astonishing thing about his offer was the size of his proposed check: Silicon Valley had never seen a venture stake of such proportions.[21] The typical fund raised by a top-flight venture partnership weighed in at around $250 million, and there was no way it would put 40 percent of its resources into a single $100 million wager.[22] Private-equity investors and corporate acquirers sometimes made investments in the $100 million range, but in return they expected to take full control of companies.[23] Son, in contrast, would be a minority investor and on an unheralded scale. Because he had SoftBank’s corporate balance sheet behind him, he could pump in fully one hundred times more capital than Sequoia had provided when Yahoo got started. After Son dropped his bombshell, Yang, Filo, and Moritz sat in silence. Disconcerted, Yang said he was flattered but didn’t need the capital.[24] “Jerry, everyone needs $100 million,” Son retorted.[25]

The third principle is to resist the allure of middling priorities. There is a story attributed to Warren Buffett—although probably only in the apocryphal way in which wise insights get attributed to Albert Einstein or the Buddha, regardless of their real source—in which the famously shrewd investor is asked by his personal pilot about how to set priorities. I’d be tempted to respond, “Just focus on flying the plane!” But apparently this didn’t take place midflight, because Buffett’s advice is different: he tells the man to make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs—because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most. You needn’t embrace the specific practice of listing out your goals (I don’t, personally) to appreciate the underlying point, which is that in a world of too many big rocks, it’s the moderately appealing ones—the fairly interesting job opportunity, the semi-enjoyable friendship—on which a finite life can come to grief. It’s a self-help cliché that most of us need to get better at learning to say no. But as the writer Elizabeth Gilbert points out, it’s all too easy to assume that this merely entails finding the courage to decline various tedious things you never wanted to do in the first place. In fact, she explains, “it’s much harder than that. You need to learn how to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life.

One of the top questions I get from managers is: “How can I carve out time to focus on long-term work when there’s so much to do right now to keep the trains running?” In the framing of this question, there is an assumption that popping your head up to plan for the months or years ahead comes at the expense of successful near-term execution. It doesn’t have to be this way. One of my colleagues runs her team with a strategy that is similar to that of an investor’s. Just as no financial advisor would recommend putting all your money into one kind of asset, neither should you tackle projects with one kind of time horizon. My colleague makes sure that a third of her team works on projects that can be completed on the order of weeks, another third works on medium-term projects that may take months, and finally, the last third works on innovative, early-stage ideas whose impact won’t be known for years. By taking this portfolio approach, her team balances making constant improvements to their core features while casting an eye toward the horizon. Over the past decade, they’ve shown that this strategy works: her team has an amazing track record of identifying new opportunities and scaling them to huge businesses over the course of three years.