Starting at GS research and migrating to the buy-side was a first hand experience in how lacking 3rd party research is.
Speedwell just released a short piece on how we differ.
https://t.co/5RlDhjZh2G
Mark Leonard on hurdle rates being magnetic.
An investor might be at the same risk— if they lower the discount rate (or required return) for one stock, perhaps the whole portfolio gravitates there overtime.
$CSU 1Q16 earnings call
Mark Leonard on hurdle rates being magnetic.
An investor might be at the same risk— if they lower the discount rate (or required return) for one stock, perhaps the whole portfolio gravitates there overtime.
$CSU 1Q16 earnings call
Former Director of Product Design at $AXON on on-prem vs cloud in CAD
"Reliability is everything in the CAD world.
That's the one thing that every customer is always going to ask for.
We thought we could build a cloud product that matched that level of stability and reliability.
I think that with some trial and error you can get there, but the true and trusted on-prem solutions, a lot of agencies still have a lot. It's like a safety blanket.
It makes them feel comfortable.
They're not trying to push the boat out too much.
I think that's one thing that Axon tried to do."
Former $META product lead on how users are switching to discovery-led platforms like Instagram from intent-based search like Google:
"Many users now go to Instagram to find travel destinations or products to purchase or even fashion or beauty things."
Can’t believe all of the AI companies made a joint statement saying Software Co’s will be fine… jk
In the past 5 days:
$NOW +36%
$TEAM +39%
$WDAY +25%
This is your daily reminder that nothing needs to change in order for things to change.
Former VP at $FOUR on churn
"I feel like their churn has stayed about the same.
I don't think they're above or below average.
When you factor in all of their accounts from SMB to enterprise, the more technical you get, the harder it is to leave."
Next week we are dropping 3 new videos.
As I mentioned in my last video, some of the content going forward is going to shift to more personal finance/ wealth management.
But we will still keep the core content that you love.
What business should we do next?
$LVMH CFO on business cyclicality
"Our business, as I said many times, is not to forecast our business, it's to adapt, and this is what we are trying to do."
- $LVMH 3Q24
Why a bear case seems scarier before you analyze it more
" I think it's like a lot of times when there's a bear case, it seems scarier before you analyze it more.
I give this example a lot, but very much with Meta, right?
There was a lot of scary things happening at one time with Meta.
And then you would analyze it more and you realize the real risk is like whether or not they're gonna be able to increase ad pricing, and everything else really wasn't a risk.
And then whether or not they'd be able to do that is a question of whether or not all of the spend, tech spend, everything they were doing at the time, all of the smartest minds working to improve ad targeting, whether or not that would yield any sort of result.
And if you thought it did, then the outcome of that just mechanically would be ad prices increased.
And so, it seems scary, but then you get into it and you're like, 'Yeah, it's kind of hard to think that the ad prices are never gonna go up, and they're never gonna get better at ad targeting ever.'
So sometimes it seems scarier, and then you zoom in, and it's not quite as scary and I think that's kind of the case with Constellation."
$CSU $META
🎙️ New Dialogue Podcast Released!
In this dialogue, we discuss:
🔹 S&P 500 valuation concerns
🔹 Thoughts on $CSU and $INTU earnings
🔹 Update on $SE and $MELI
Listen below 👇
Should’ve been Hegel and not Heidegger, but I still think it’s interesting to not how hard it is to care about something before the rest of the world does.
Thoughts on $INTU TurboTax competition and losing market share
" What's happening is their old competitor set, who's existed for a long time, got more aggressive on pricing and took a little bit of market share.
They said on the call it was one point of market share.
But this is only amongst their least valuable users.
So this is people who with under $50,000 a year, that file pretty simple returns.
And so they basically got less competitive in that market, didn't have offers.
At the same time, their competitors got more competitive.
They lost one point of market share.
So they said on the call explicitly that AI was not a factor in that.
Now, how exactly they would know that, I'm not entirely sure, to be fair.
But it makes sense to me that if you go to one of these LLMs and the experience now, it just doesn't work. It's gonna lie.
It's going to fabricate something.
It's going to make up some numbers.
That to me seems credible that you're not seeing any actual threat today from AI doing people's taxes, that it was just a result of these other competitors being more competitive on pricing."
Thoughts on the narrative shift of $CSU and why the stock has fallen -45% from its highs
" In terms of what actually precipitated this sell-off, I think this is a very educational moment for investors who believe that stock prices are driven by actual business developments.
Sometimes, even threats, narratives, and all that, because as you point out, the AI narrative was there for a while.
What really caused this decline is people decided to start caring more and fearing about it more, and it kind of all happens together at the same time.
It's almost like this Heidegger idea of the Geist or the moment in time.
I'm probably butchering his philosophy there, but for some reason, for somehow, certain ideas just take a hold of a crowd, and it's very hard to predict that.
And when they do, it just can lead to sort of very strong behaviors, herd-like behaviors.
And people who wouldn't have really questioned software so much, even if they saw something from, you know, Anthropic come out a year ago, all of a sudden now are, you know, pessimistic on the entire space, which is fine.
You know, people can make their own decisions and all that, but it certainly is odd when nothing else really changes or develops that all of a sudden people decide that this is something I'm gonna care about now.
And yeah, Anthropic's been putting out more demos and all of that, and maybe it feels a little bit more salient, so there's a little saliency bias and all that.
But a lot of this existed a year ago, but it didn't react at the time."
🎙️ New Dialogue Podcast Released!
In this dialogue, we discuss:
🔹 S&P 500 valuation concerns
🔹 Thoughts on $CSU and $INTU earnings
🔹 Update on $SE and $MELI
Listen below 👇
The S&P 500 forward multiple is 21x
That is 1.5 standard deviations above its historical average
The real risk is not index concentration, but the elevated high valuations that tend to come alongside that concentration