Copart: a wonderful company at a wonderful price (I bought it, of course) open.substack.com/pub/undisc…

Nick Sleep bought a Zimbabwe cement company for 1/70th of what it would cost to rebuild. Then inflation came. From 599% in 2003 to 79,600,000,000% in 1 month in 2008. The stock exchange even closed. But guess what, his Zimbabwe stocks still went up 3 to 8x in $. He later mailed his investors a 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar bill, worth less than a bag of cement.

Say what you will about fund managers, they know how to build a great reading list.

Peter Lynch’s very first stock went up 10x. For none of the reasons he bought it. He’d bet on the future of air freight, and then the Vietnam War started, the US military needed Flying Tiger’s planes, and the stock took off. T That lucky 10x paid for his graduate school. Not the best first lesson, but he still became Peter Lynch.

The one forecast with a 100% hit rate.

Michael Bloomberg was building a financial data terminal and needed a 1st customer. So he started showing up at Merrill Lynch around 7 a.m. (no, he didn’t work there, but security wasn’t quite what it is today...). He’d walk into people’s offices and ask if they had a few minutes to talk about what they needed. Not exactly what people want from a complete stranger that early in the morning, and he kept getting brushed off. So he came back with coffee and tea, with milk and without, and sugar on the side, so nobody had an excuse to say no. Day after day. Until Merrill Lynch bought 20 terminals and 30% of his company for $30M. In 2008, the 20% Merrill still held was worth $4.4B. It all started with a few coffees, a few teas, and a ridiculous amount of persistence.

Half of micro caps would become small caps if their CEOs read this chart every day.

76% of the market’s best days showed up when it was still very easy to feel stupid for being long. Since 1996, 24 of the S&P 500’s 50 best days came in bear markets and 14 more in the first 2 months of a new bull market. Waiting for the market to feel safe again gets you the other 24%.

With cars like these, pedestrians will need a license. Short $TSLA.

98-99% of companies don’t move enough capital from their weak businesses to their best ones, even though their managers see every number. Hard to find a better argument for being a concentrated investor.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Copart-ACV deal is closed. $CPRT $ACVA Get ready to hear the word “synergies” everywhere. Now it’s up to Copart to show they’ll be good ones.

Ted Weschler paid $2,626,311 for a meal with Warren Buffett in 2010, then did it again the next year for $100 more (just for good measure). Buffett hired him a few months later to manage money at Berkshire. Yeah, the $100 did it.

Print this table, hang it in your bathroom, and save millions in opportunity cost over decades.

Boost Run said it all in its name: first the boost, then the shareholders ran. $BRUN

Defense, aerospace and mining stocks are getting hammered. Yeah, rates may be higher, yeah, a ceasefire may be coming. But absolutely none of it changes the long-term theses: the end of multilateralism, global rearmament, inflationary policies, supply chain disruption, the AI revolution, etc. As long as order books keep filling and political irresponsibility continues, any news that makes prices drop significantly is a buying opportunity for long-term investors. This is the perfect example right now. My limit orders have been set for months, and I hope the sale continues and fills as many of them as possible. (Don’t forget to keep a few percent for absurdly low prices, you never know.)

The father of value investing had 2 rules: never over 5% in one stock, sell when it gets too high. With GEICO he broke both: 20% of his fund, kept long after it looked expensive. That one stock made more than everything else in 20 years combined. That says a lot about a lot.

"What are the best stocks to buy right now?" "Is the stock undervalued?" "Which company has 2x potential in the next six months?"

Growth is way more valuable when nobody has to pay for it.

I can beat ChatGPT easily. I sell $2 for $1 and reach 50M users in 2 days. And I’m still more profitable than OpenAI.