Caveat Emptor

The Pied Piper of SPACs https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/06/07/the-pied-piper-of-spacs| Characteristics of Operating managers / Investing managers to Avoid 1) Two-faced inconsistent communication style between trusted followers <Rebellious Teen> and social media <Social Justice Capitalism>. Hustler like personality and shameless self promotion   Particularly talented at manipulating the media, combining storytelling, narratives and buzzwords “Polarization gets you on CNBC, it gets you Twitter followers, it gets you a megaphone. If you believe that Chamath can get an hour on CNBC to explain Virgin Galactic, then you want to buy into this deal, because attention is money.” On CNBC, he adopted the calm and serious language of high finance. On podcasts, he waxed sincere, confessing (https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/3/4/18247010/chamath-palihapitiya-social-capital-happiness-identity-crisis-kara-swisher-teddy-schleifer-podcast)  that, by working with two therapis...

  Big Mistakes – The Best investors and their worst Investments One of the best books I recently read about investing is from Michael Batnick, which writes in his blog https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/ .One common problem for investors is that they commonly fall into the authority bias, and hero worship <The Greats>, or any new upcoming charismatic personality that is been promoted on CNBC Twitter and Bloomberg, instead of vetting their long term performance or their flaws. I personally find the story of Bill Ackman particularly fascinating and will follow up with a separate post on his hits and misses. This book provides a good reminder that even the best investors are merely human and makes the same mistakes as any other, and the wise learn from other’s costly mistakes than to make one themselves. There is a great quote from this book which I take it to heart.   <The difference between the normal investors and the great investors, is that the normal ones ar...