«Approchons-nous donc avec assurance du trône de la grâce afin d’obtenir compassion et de trouver grâce pour être secourus au moment opportun.»
Hébreux 4:16
French billionaire Vincent Bolloré has created a Christian-inspired think tank with other wealthy business leaders to propose a conservative agenda ahead of the country’s presidential election next year https://t.co/ibwo7W0PU4
"It is not the barbarians at the gates that worry me; it is the traitors within. Those who forget their Faith, who scoff at their history, and who welcome the enemies of Christ with open arms. These are the ones who will bring down Christendom, brick by brick."
— Hilaire Belloc
Aliko Dangote once had multiple homes in several countries, a nightlife of fancy parties, a Rolls-Royce and a Ferrari. Then he got serious about industrialization. “Some of us need to rescue the country,” he said. https://t.co/ZEZJ7bhk7W
Dangote in 1991
"People look at the money we make here (in Nigeria), but they do not know what business we have abroad. I cannot tell you everything, but I have other investments abroad. I am too smart to put all my eggs in one basket."
Source: Citizen
Brian Armstrong shares the most important lesson from his startup failure before Coinbase
After realizing he could make $60/hour tutoring as a college student, Brian and his roommate decided to build an online marketplace for tutors. They would match tutors with students and take a 10% fee on all of the payments.
It worked great but there was one hiccup:
“What would happen often is they would meet the tutor and do the first payment, but then afterwards they’d start paying them under the table. So I realized at a certain point, we were basically just getting in the way. They wanted us to just match them, but they didn’t want us to be the whole billing apparatus.”
After struggling with this problem for years, Brian decided it wasn’t working and took a job as an early employee at Airbnb. He was initially planning on shutting down the site, but because 5,000-10,000 people were still using it every month, he decided to remove the payments and just make it a free online tutoring directory. He also added the option for tutors to pay $10/mo. to promote their profiles on the site.
Then he stopped looking at the site to focus on his new job. But the site suddenly began to take off. It doubled every year, and eventually Brian was able to sell the business for $2 million.
Brian concludes:
“The lesson was to stop trying to extract value and start trying to create more value.”
Video source: @StevenBartlett (2022)
"Today automatically no one believes in God, but it's purely a mob phenomenon. It's not because there are powerful scientific arguments. It's Peter's denial, that's all it is."
The legacy of Archbishop Lefebvre. The head of the Holy Ghost Fathers and special representative of Pope Pius XII, he was the premier prelate in all Africa and, as we found out here in Kenya, his spirit never left this continent, even despite the revolution.
✠ Nous sommes la seule religion vraie – Mgr Marcel Lefebvre
1/2) « Pourquoi ont été persécutés Pierre et Paul et tous les martyrs ? Parce qu’ils étaient chrétiens, disciples de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ, parce qu’ils disaient : Nous sommes la seule religion vraie. ↓
"Never forget that a small group of highly competent but slightly crazy guys can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
- Peter Thiel
Hohn’s story is wild.
In 2008, he lost 43% and watched his fund collapse from $19 billion to under $5 billion. Investors fled. He publicly swore off activism after getting humiliated in a railroad proxy fight.
17 years later, he just posted the largest single-year hedge fund profit in history.
Here’s what happened in between:
From 2003 to 2007, Chris Hohn was the golden boy of activist investing. He ran TCI like a wrecking ball. Bought 1% of ABN Amro and sent a scathing letter demanding breakup. Triggered a $100 billion bidding war at the peak of the market. Forced out the CEO of Deutsche Börse after killing their London Stock Exchange bid. German politicians called him a “locust.” He didn’t care. Assets soared 30-fold in five years.
Then 2008 hit.
TCI lost 43%. His CSX railroad battle turned into a public disaster when the stock dropped 50% after he won four board seats. He declared defeat, sold his shares, and told the press he was done with activism. By 2012, assets had collapsed to $4.9 billion. Most of his team quit.
What most people don’t know is what Hohn did next.
He looked at his portfolio and realized he’d been playing the wrong game. Special situations. Distressed plays. Banks. He’d strayed from concentration into complexity.
So he rebuilt TCI around a single thesis: own monopolies.
Not “companies with moats.” Actual monopolies. His test: can they price above inflation? If competition can compress margins, he walks. Airlines grow 5% annually and make no money. Airports grow 5% annually and print cash. He wants the airports.
The result is a 10-stock portfolio where GE Aerospace represents 23% of a $50 billion fund. Five holdings account for 73%. Portfolio turnover sits at 21%. Average holding period rivals some marriages.
Griffin’s $16 billion record in 2022 came from running hundreds of strategies across thousands of positions with 2,900 employees. Hohn’s $18.9 billion came from sitting in credit rating agencies and aerospace duopolies for a decade with a team of 8.
Same destination. Opposite paths.
Citadel wins by being everywhere during chaos. TCI wins by being nowhere except inside tollbooths.
The real lesson here: Hohn turned a 43% drawdown and near-total investor exodus into the highest annual profit any hedge fund has ever generated. He did it by becoming the opposite of what made him famous. Less activism, more patience. Fewer stocks, longer holds. No banks, no airlines, just monopolies that can raise prices faster than inflation.
Sometimes the real alpha comes from nearly losing everything.
Hedge fund manager Sir Christopher Hohn beat rivals including Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Izzy Englander’s Millennium to make $18.9bn for investors last year, the largest annual gain recorded by a hedge fund. https://t.co/DhEBHGg5As