Episode 9: Integrated Research, Xref and Mailbag

I recently re-read Robert Pirsig’s classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values“. Penned in 1974, it’s a philosophical reflection on values and the art of living. I highly recommend it. What has that got to do with investing? Well, as it turns out, a lot—at least in my opinion! Here are some of the insights from […]

We love our small caps here at Strawman. And not without good reason. The trouble is, at least according to conventional wisdom, that things are far riskier in that space. Perhaps that’s true, to some extent, if by risk you mean volatility. And it’s not an unfair characterisation if you assume, as many do, that “small cap” must mean pre-revenue, […]

Where to next for Advance Nanotek (ASX:ANO)?

When people talk about capital, they tend to mean stuff: factories, patents, cash, code. Things you can count, stick in a spreadsheet, and list on a balance sheet. But that misses the point. The real magic of capital isn’t in the owning. It’s in the doing. Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist and author, put it brilliantly in The Mystery […]

There’s no surer deflator of markets as uncertainty. It’s the key ingredient to any bear market; the more there is, the sharper the falls. That’s why the coronavirus is wreaking such havoc. No one really knows how far it will spread, how many deaths it will cause and how long it will last. The potential economic impact ranges from ‘sharp […]

Timeless wisdom for better results

In his 2005 shareholder letter, Warren Buffett shared a neat little parable about a wealthy family called the Gotrocks. It’s a sharp jab at the investment advisory industry — and it clearly struck a chord with Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, who later gave it a starring role in The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. Here’s the gist: The Gotrocks family […]

Two of the best books I’ve read in recent years are Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, and The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch. Neither is related to investing, but they’ve been incredibly valuable in shaping how I think about it. Specifically in regard to the importance of narrative and the nature of knowledge. Harari argues that much of human interaction — […]