How we got up the Glenmutchkin Railway
I came across this great story a little while ago and I've been meaning to post it for the amusement of fellow Strawpeople. It's a satirical short story called ``How we got up the Glenmutchkin Railway, and how we got out of it'' all about speculation on dodgy railway companies in the mid-1800s in Scotland. If you like old-timey language then it's a great read, but it's also very good as you can clearly see that approaches to the share market haven't changed in well over 100 years. ``There's nothing new in investing'' as they say.
Here's the link: http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/glen6.pdf.
Incidentally, this comes from the webpage of Andrew Odlyzko (http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/index.html), who collects information about price bubbles for a book he's supposedly writing. But if you're in maths or computer science you're more likely to have heard his name in connection with the Riemann Hypothesis, as he has generated mind-boggling amounts of data on it. I used his data to write a couple of papers, which is how I found all this.
Enjoy the Glenmutchkin story!
PS: ``How we got up the Glenmutchkin Railway'' means ``How we got the Glenmutchkin Railway started'' not ``How we travelled along the Glenmutchkin Railway''. The story made more sense to me once I figured that out!
Another great post from Howard Marks is out. This one all about the futility of macro forecasts.
Just read the following and thought it was interesting: https://www.firehose.vc/p/firehose-194-operating-leverage-?utm_source=url
The article relates to operating leverage, but specifically looks at the core difference between product and services-orientated businesses.
Operating leverage gets more complex in typically low margin businesses like marketplaces. The article uses TDUP as an example. Something more relevant to us might be Redbubble. Marketplaces aren't usually my cup of tea from an investment perspective -- but I think the article's authors do a great job of summarising some of the key considerations re: operating leverage.