C&B Notes

Nick Sleep and Qais Zakaria’s Nomad Investment Partnership Letters to Partners 2001-2014 offer a treasure trove of great insights. One idea worth highlighting is their concept of “scaled economies shared.” This idea of scaled economies shared lies behind the success…

Xi Jingping’s consolidation of power in China is not new news.  The ruling party’s re-versioning of history through a modern propaganda effort is both petty and chilling, particularly with the backdrop of widespread human right atrocities in the northwestern part of the country.  Xi’s re-embrace of Mao, rejection…

One of our favorite and most informative sources of information are the charts delivered by The Daily Shot; we would recommend it to you. This chart caught our eye – Gavekal Research shows a strong positive relationship between commodity price…

We are big fans of Russ Roberts and his EconTalk podcast – it should be on your regular rotation if you like the podcast format.  We recently listened to one from deep in Roberts’ archive.  This interview with a Frito-Lay…

Quarantine was first widely used in Venice in the 1300’s as the city-state grappled with the Black Death.  The term itself is derived from quaranta, the Italian word for 40.  General policy of Venice was to keep visiting sailors and…

Like many of you, we have kids at home participating in e-learning.  While COVID-19 is unlikely to fundamentally transform primary and secondary education, at least in the short-term, it could shake the foundations of higher education.  Colleges will face immediate…

Thankfully and mercifully, daily life in Venezuela is evolving.  We did not expect this level of relief without a leadership transition, but the Maduro administration has quietly allowed free market reforms to take shape.  The country is now essentially dollarized,…

We know of no company other than Daily Journal Corporation that could publish this statement of material weaknesses and not have shareholders worry about the veracity of the financials.  It is a testament to the reputation that Charlie Munger and…

A very strange, unintended consequence of negative interest rate policies. German banks are stuffing vaults with money to help offset the mounting cost of negative interest rates, and some of them are running out of space. The physical cash holdings…

EBITDA calculations vary widely across businesses and industries, and loosey-goosey “adjusted” EBITDA definitions exacerbate risk for lenders who are already offering covenant-lite terms.  As this recent study reveals, 5.0x debt-to-EBITDA ratios are not all created equal when the denominator is…

In April 2017, we ran a note about a strategic effort by Adidas to add “Speedfactories” to diversify its global supply chain.  It evidently didn’t work, which leads to some interesting questions about the inevitability of automation to kill lower-wage…

We have visited hundreds, if not thousands, of “mom and pop” stores throughout Latin America, as they account for a large portion of retail sales in the region.  Kiranas, which are akin to Latin American bodegas, are of similar —…