Behind Walmart’s Flipkart Deal
Walmart’s deal to buy India’s Flipkart had many twists and turns, including an assertive challenge from Amazon. This New York Times’DealBook column writes, By last November, Walmart was ready to discuss a deal. Initially, Walmart was focused on acquiring a minority stake in Flipkart, these people said. But over time, both sides came to realize […]
When Love Makes Peace Possible
The French-born American Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915–68) wrote in No Man Is an Island (1955,) Violence rests on the assumption that the enemy and I are entirely different: the enemy is evil and I am good. The enemy must be destroyed but I must be saved. But love sees things differently. It sees that […]
Pervasiveness of the Capitalist-Consumerist Ideal
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist-consumerist ethic is […]
Warren Buffett on Brand Moats
Following Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (later joined by Bill Gates) have a tradition of doing more than a few interviews. Here’s a snippet from their 07-May-2018 interview (video, transcript) with CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box,” You’ve gotta have a product that’s strong enough that the realer—retailer has to […]
Warren Buffett: There’s No Degree of Difficulty Adjustment for Value Investing
At the 2005 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, Warren Buffett opined that there’s no “degree of difficulty” adjustment for investing: One of the interesting things about investment is that there’s no degree of difficulty factor. I mean, if you’re going to go diving in the Olympics and try to win a gold medal, you get paid […]
The Wisdom of the Heart
Gaylon Ferguson writes in Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Wisdom We Were Born With, Mindfulness opens the doorway into a fuller experience of the heart, the richly rewarding yet volatile realm of emotions. The practice of being present is valuable not only for the mental sharpness it brings to decision-making but also for providing fertile ground […]
Hardening Our Hearts
Pema Chodron writes in Practicing Peace in Times of War, This is a familiar scenario in our homes, in our workplaces, in our communities, even when we’re just driving our cars. We’re just driving along and someone cuts in front of us and then what? Well, we don’t like it, so we roll down the […]
Charlie Munger on Changing a Big Bureaucratic Culture
At the Daily Journal Corporation Annual Shareholders’ Meeting 2018 (14-Feb-2018,) Charlie Munger opined about big bureaucratic cultures and organizational change: What big businesses have in common by and large is that they get very bureaucratic. That’s the one norm in culture is that they get very bureaucratic. And of course it happens to the government […]
Warren Buffett on Speculation
Following Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger (later joined by Bill Gates) have a tradition of doing more than a few interviews. Here’s a snippet from their 07-May-2018 interview (video, transcript) with CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box,” When we buy a business we look at what the business earns and […]
Making Money Easily in the Stock Market
From Benjamin Graham & David Dodd’s Security Analysis: The cardinal defect of instability may not be regarded, therefore, as menacing the long-range development of common stocks as a whole. It does indeed exert a powerful temporary effect upon all business through the variations of the economic cycle, and it has permanently adverse effects upon individual […]