#1 Weekly update
Weight loss drug, Freight brokerage bubble, luxury industry and more
Articles
1.Upgrading from Overweight: The Effects of GLP-1 Drugs on the Investment Landscape by Citrini’s Newsletter
A good overview on the drugs that is supposed to help with weight management. (Read with a grain of salt as the author might have biased view due to his holdings have major exposure in the drugs)
Estimated reading time: 30 minutes
2.Freight brokerage bubble bursting as freight markets face long winter by Craig Fuller
For those who are interested in logistic particularly in US, Craig Fuller could be one of the best person to follow as he shared insightful thoughts on the freight industry.
This article provides a good overview on how freight broker grow by using both debt and receivable factoring to fuel their growth during good time. However, these companies are facing 2 issues: reduction in revenue (ie: from $3,000 to $1,500 per average load) that affects their ability to factor as well as rise of cost of capital.
This will essentially crunch their working capital and company with poor cash management will face significant liquidity risk. Convoy, is the first victim and more to comes. (Note: trucking essentially is a highly commoditized business and failure rate is high but there are some exception like ODFL 0.00%↑ which I wrote previously. )
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
3.China Chips and Moore’s Law by Stratechery
Ben Thompson is probably one of the best tech writer due to his unique writing style and access to leaders. It is a must follow for anyone who is looking for insights into some of the most interesting topics like Artificial Intelligence, AR vs VR, etc.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Podcast
Todd Combs - Investing, the Last Liberal Art by Colossus
Todd Combs is an Investment Manager at Berkshire Hathaway and CEO of GEICO. The podcast cover his journey to working alongside Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, how to build range across skill sets, and tactics to compound for decades.
One of my favorite point by Todd in the interview is his total honesty and fearless reaction to Buffett questions. I believe Buffett chose him as a successor for this reason. He don’t need a Yes-man but someone who can think independently.
“Warren asked me, is Progressive better than Geico or vice versa? I said, yes, they are. And he pushed back a little bit, and I said, Geico's better at marketing and branding, but Progressive is a data company and data is going to win in the long run. And I said, "Neither one are super great at technology." And obviously, I didn't know the tech stack at Geico like I do now.”
Estimated listening time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Books
Future Luxe: What's Ahead for the Business of Luxury by Erwan Rambourg
The author share some interesting views on the future of luxury business as well as interview with some entrepreneurs to learn how the industry has involved over the years. For those who are interested to learn about the future trend on the luxury industry should read it.
Estimated reading time: 20 hours
Disclosure: I am not affiliated to any of the authors or writers and didn’t receive any monetary compensation. It is merely for education purpose and my passion to investing. Cheers!!!