1. The number of 15-year-old male students in Sweden who don’t speak the mother tongue jumped from 5.7% in 2016 to 11.1% in 2019. (Article in Swedish, but Google translate does a good enough job)
2. BART’s sharp turn in Oakland was built to avoid a hardware store.
3. Duck feet!
4. Decoupling, US-China edition.
5. Outsiders, on the top 8 CEOs of the 20th century by value returned to shareholders.
…a very select group of men and women who understood, among other things, that:
- Capital allocation is a CEO’s most important job.
- What counts in the long run is the increase in per share value, not overall growth or size.
- Cash flow, not reported earnings, is what determines longterm value
- Decentralized organizations release entrepreneurial energy and keep both costs and “rancor” down.
- Independent thinking is essential to long-term success, and interactions with outside advisers (Wall Street, the press, etc.) can be distracting and time-consuming.
- Sometimes, the best investment opportunity is your own stock.
- With acquisitions, patience is a virtue… as is occasional boldness.
If you’re skeptical:
…on average they outperformed the S&P by over twenty times and their peers by over seven times…