Sunday, August 11, 2019

Today we have discussions on stock selection from multiple managers, how sci-fi ideas have overlapped with the trade war, Bill Gates’ favorite author explaining why the world is improving, and an interesting application of artificial intelligence.

~ Join others who receive podcast emails once a week about business, sports, leadership, success and more! Sign up here ~

Business

• Masters in Business: Rajiv Jain Discusses Portfolio Management. Jain is the chairman and chief investment officer at GQG Partners, which has $24 billion in assets under management and was named Morningstar’s International Manager of the Year in 2012. Jain talks a lot about portfolio management and the difference between being a PM and analyst. He talks about his sell discipline and the idea that selling is more difficult for PM’s, the importance of eating your own cooking and why he has so much of his net worth in his fund, and the importance of managers to evolve over time and have positive performance over multiple cycles. [August 2, 2019–1 hour, 6 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link

Jain’s Book Recommendations: 1) Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, 2) The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, 3) The Art of Happiness, 4) Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, 5) Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life, 6) Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

• Invest Like The Best: Chris Bloomstran — What Makes a Quality Company. Bloomstran is the president and chief investment officer of Semper Augustus Investments Group. He starts by explaining he loves companies that have a strong management team that have the ability to reinvest at a high ROIC, and explain why both Costco and Dollar General fall into that category. At the 37 minute mark, the conversation turns to Berkshire Hathaway, which made Bloomstran famous a few years ago when he published a detailed paper on Berkshire. At the 59 minute mark, they start to bring the episode to a close by discussing adjustments he and his team make to financial statements and the impact of underfunded defined benefit pension plans on companies financial profile.[August 6, 2019–1 hour, 17 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link
• We Study Billionaires — The Investors Podcast: TIP 254: Value Investing w/ Bill Nygren. Nygren is a value investor and Chief Investment Officer and PM of the Oakmark Fund. The episode covers both his investment process and some thoughts on individual stocks. He begins by explaining he looks for three factors when investing, all of which both increase returns and reduce risks: buying when a stock is at a discount to long-term business value, buying companies with dividend growth and expected per share value growth that matches or exceeds the S&P 500, and management that acts like owners. Then he talks about some specific names and sectors he likes: Google, Capital One, MasterCard, big banks, auto-part manufacturers, and Netflix. [August 4, 2019–37 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link
• Odd Lots: How Science Fiction Explains the U.S. — China Trade War. This episode‘s guest is Laban Yu, head of Hong Kong and China research at Jefferies, who discusses the parallels between sci-fi and the trade war. With so much of the trade war centered around technology, there is surprisingly a lot of overlap between both sci-fi and the trade war. Yu discusses the impact of the export ban and how companies will try to get around it, why the US’s actions may lead China to ramp up domestic spending, and how President Trump is using tariffs unlike any President has before. [August 5, 2019–34 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link
• The Acquirer’s Podcast: Short iRhythm $IRTC: Kerrisdale’s Dahm Adrangi and David Cohen. This was a fun and new type of episode from The Acquirer’s Podcast called “Acquirer’s Active” which is a quick talk with investors about one of their positions and the thesis behind it. This episode features both Sahm Adrangi and David Cohen of Kerrisdale Capital about their short thesis on Irhythm Technologies Inc. They explain the company’s main product is a wearable biosensing patch that helps diagnose cardiac arrhythmias. Their short thesis includes the following: the company will soon experience a shift from a temporary code to a permanent code for reimbursements, a stretched valuation [trading at 10x sales], and decelerating volume growth. [August 6, 2019–11 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link

The Rest

• The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast: Progress, Despite Everything. Peterson is joined by the author of Bill Gates’ favorite book of all-time, Steven Pinker, who is a psychology professor at Harvard and author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. The book tracks violence throughout history and applies different metrics to measure progress, which provides how and why the world is continuing to improve despite what is shown on the news. He covers the ideas from his book with Peterson and explains why it’s difficult for so many people to believe the world is improving. He also discusses why he has become somewhat of a controversial figure in the media. [August 4, 2019–1 hour, 36 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link

The United Nations estimates that at this rate, by 2030 there won’t be anyone in the world who’s living below the current poverty level.

• Planet Money: #932: Deep Learning With The Elephants. This was a fun episode on a non-investment way that applying AI and machine learning to a problem can help you need to analyze a massive data-set. A group of individuals wanted to count the number of elephants to help scientists know where and when they are being killed. They set up 50 cameras that recorded for three months, totaling over 100,000 hours of audio. They used AI and machine learning to analyze the data and notate when an elephant made a sound. As a result, the researchers were able to determine where and when the elephants are at all times of the year so they know where to send anti-poaching teams to help protect them. [August 9, 2019–25 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link