I'm excited to share that I'm joining Arqos Capital as a Managing Director, to lead their Private Equity and Venture Capital efforts while replanting my roots in my home country – Venezuela. I genuinely believe we’re facing a generational opportunity to rebuild and invest behind Venezuela's upcoming recovery, and few platforms are as well positioned as Arqos. The firm sits in a unique position for this stage as it has been investing in Venezuela since 2019 – a deeply contrarian decision at the time. Over that period, Arqos has built a highly reputable asset management platform, an exceptional team, and a differentiated position in one of the most overlooked markets in the world which now has transformed into a valuable first mover advantage. Today it finds itself at the right place and at the right time. On a personal level, this opportunity is especially meaningful. After 17 years abroad, I’m excited to reconnect with my home country and contribute, in a small way, to this long-awaited reconstruction phase while also helping build the Arqos platform. Sleepwell Capital will remain active as a side-project focusing on selective high-conviction opportunities and a content platform, always using the same filter: looking at and talking about things that fascinate me and drive my curiosity. This is a major (and unexpected) career transition for me after spending over 10 years as a public markets investor, but I couldn't be more excited.

A big part of becoming a better investor is not very intuitive: Studying non-investing related fields like psychology, history, physics, complex adaptive systems, non-linearity, probability and statistics. Here are my 10 favorite non-investing investing books📚 Thread 🧵👇

Starbucks writing the names of millions of people in wrong and funny ways to get them to post their cups in all of Social Media. For Free.

Ed Thorpe is 91 years, yet he looks like he’s in his 60s. To paraphrase @FoundersPodcast, this guy has mastered life across all aspects.

$META traded at <4x 2024 earnings in November 2022

Investor type based on the watch you wear: Seiko: Value Grand Seiko: GARP Tudor: Quality Rolex: Compounder Bro Casio: Deep value Apple Watch: just buys tech Audemars Piguet: 13F copycat Patek Philippe: never sell Hublot: Meme stonk Richard Mille: YOLO

Two years ago from today, I left JPMorgan and emailed Jamie on my last day. Haters will say it was his secretary responding, but my gut says it’s legit😅

• Death • Taxes • Chamath disappearing from Twitter when his portfolio is down

$GOOG Services segment operating margin: 36% $LVMH Fashion & Leather Goods segment operating margin: 41%

Crocs has a higher operating margin than LVMH.

Buffett originally offered $850 for $Y but said he wouldn't pay a dime to Investment Bankers; so the final price subtracts Goldman's $27mm fee (who advised Alleghany) to result in a $848.02 price per share for shareholders.

Independent artist and long time investor here. A few thoughts: - You were wrong in hindsight clearly but it would have been incredibly tough to see how this was going to play out early on while it was private. Music industry is a cemetery of startups trying to disrupt the industry, almost never works. I would have probably passed too. -SPOT imo first became interesting in mid-2019 (broken IPO) and then stupid cheap throughout most of 2022 (~1x sales while quickly becoming profitable). -What did people get wrong? 3 things IMO: 1) Artists have no power vs SPOT, they may have had some at the very beginning but that quickly faded as they gained scale and it became clear that music exclusives didn’t work (ie Tidal) and artists had to be everywhere to maximize fan exposure and income. T-Swift actually did leave SPOT for a while, it had zero impact on churn or user acq and she came back eventually. She may be the biggest artist but she’s not big enough to move the needle. Oh also she banks like $80mm p/yr from SPOT. 2) The hotter debate back then was the labels vs SPOT narrative, where most people thought labels could call all the shots and never let SPOT make any money. What people didn’t realize was that the relationship was way more symbiotic in reality and SPOT was quickly making up ~20% of label revenues (and the highest growth/margin), they also became public companies so had very little reason to change the status quo. People also failed to realize what the second order effects “pulling catalog” would be, an absolute PR nightmare from artists/managers/songwriters, potential lawsuits and making your competing labels richer given how the money is split based on stream share. Majors are also obsessed with market share so this would be opposed to that core belief. Finally, there was really no reason for them to even consider something like this, SPOT was and is their best friend, if you tried to kill them you’re left dealing with 3 big tech co’s that don’t care much about music, a much worse proposition. This is not to say labels have no leverage, ofc they do, but it’s like many supplier/distributor relationship w/concentrated power where both parties can still be profitable. 3) Finally I think everyone (including myself) underestimated the combination of pricing power and financial discipline. SPOT has very good retention + loyal customers, high switching costs and an incredibly priced product (music is still the cheapest form of media). You also only need one platform as opposed to video where people pay for 4-5. And the real surprise was how quickly Ek&co moved to cut costs and make this not just a great product but a great company, >11% EBIT margins was unthinkable even 18 months ago and they’re already there and guiding higher. This is in large part the result of a founder-led company that has executed spectacularly, and who was underestimated by many.

Sell-Side Equity Research gets its fair share of criticism from investors, but it’s also a good training ground where you can learn about the investment process and become a better investor. Here are 10 things I learned during my time on the sell-side 👇🧵

Would love to see him singing Hurt by Nine Inch Nails

Trump invited to the Rolex suite at the US Open Mens Finals, hanging out with Rolex CEO Jean-Frederic Dufour Expect some potential resolution or relief from Swiss tariffs to come this week.

Which private companies would you consider buying if they were public? For me Chick-fil-A, Trader Joe’s and Patagonia.

Todd Combs mentioned 4 books in The Art of Investing podcast, all seem worthwhile: -Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World -Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk -Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe -Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen

Wait… wh……wha… …what…?????

CEO blaming shareholders for a bad acquisition is a first! $CROX

Dear NYTimes: You still underestimate my ability to click ctrl+A➡️ctrl+C in under 20 milliseconds.

Lots of debate around the Labels vs. $SPOT narrative in the last two days with UMG news. Also a lot of misunderstandings. Long thread with my views and clarifications Let’s go 💽👇🏽🎶

My favorite line from the $BRK letter: “mistakes fade away; winners can forever blossom”

Men only want one thing:

this is a very important book.

Why doesn’t YouTube allow all of its users to listen to videos with the app closed/phone locked? It would instantly become the biggest audio company in the world (2.1B+ users) and change its consumer habits. If they were serious about audio, they would have done this already.

Make this guy Fed Chairman right now

$AMZN tried to launch in Mexico without using $GOOG ads, as an experiment. It didn’t work and they quickly caved.

Hermès results (+15% organic) are a good reminder that true luxury is a rare occurrence and that luxury is a wide spectrum with vastly different economics

-So what’s your edge? -I’m from Latin America so I avoid Latam stocks

$NFLX 10-K came out and I can finally update this chart. Produced content assets are now 55% vs 45% last year and 13% 5 yrs ago. This is content where they own the IP. Licensed includes Netflix Originals made by other studios, which are exclusive but they don’t own, and re-runs

The @mjmauboussin Papers. My favorites are: 1) Managing the Man Overboard Moment 2) Calculating ROIC 3) What does Price-to-Earnings mean? 4) Measuring the Moat 5) Reflections on the 10 Attributes of Great Investors 6) Sharpening Your Forecasting Skills ritholtz.com/michael-maubous…

Berkshire’s $AAPL position now a 5X; worth $155B or 24% of $BRK market cap.

Why is $CELH up 30% when they're effectively acknowledging they need spend billions to buy competitors to stay competitive? Just a bystander so happy to hear other views.

Peloton paid more royalties to the music industry than TikTok in 2022 ($267m vs $220m) according to Goldman Sachs

Nobody: Sell Side Analysts:

Hello Twitter👋 I deeply believe in the power of this platform so I’m asking for your help Looking for opportunities on the buyside—here’s my anonymous CV📜 I’d greatly appreciate if you can share or pass along to whoever comes to mind and hopefully I can payback in some way 🙏🏼

You guys like to call Warren and Charlie “outdated” but they have been working remotely since 1959.

This Bezos quote about $AMZN also applies to investing: “If everything you do needs to work on a 3-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a 7-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people”

Some pretty unbelievable places I’ve been to these past few days road-tripping in Northern Spain. Saludos a todos🤟🏼

Serious question… where did all the web3 people go?

One big takeaway of this slide is how weak LVMH’s watch portfolio is, which must be driving Arnault crazy. Probably the only vertical where they don’t own any real luxury businesses.

On Nov 2022, $META traded at 13X Q2'25 earnings

I had no idea L'Oreal $OR had a Loyalty Share Program Shareholders can register shares under their name, hold them for 2 years and get a 10% higher dividend (6.60 vs 6.0) It's supposed to incentivize long-term ownership. Any other companies that do this? loreal-finance.com/eng/regis…

Had no idea that $NFLX had an $AMZN AWS pitch on their 10-K

Marina Industry Fundamentals: -Fragmented Industry: Top 5 operators make up ~4% -Industry dynamics: High barriers to entry + decline of total marina supply + steady increase of boat demand & size -Supportive demographics: Retiring baby boomers source: $SUI

$UHAL CEO just laughed at loud when an Analyst asked him about April and May trends.

$GOOG growing top-line 15-20%, high incremental margins and trading close to 20x ’22 EPS is a “don’t try to reinvent the wheel you idiot” idea And no, I’m not adjusting for cash, SBC, losses in other bets/cloud,etc Also buybacks are still a joke: share count down <5% since 2018

$GOOG shareholders rushing to update their SOTP models with Chrome valuation at $34.5B

$BRK 10-year performance vs. the S&P Phew.

The Investor’s Dilemma: If valuation is so difficult (or impossible) to pinpoint, is it worth spending too much time on it?

TCI (Chris Hohn) going activist on $GOOG: “We are writing to express our view that the cost base of Alphabet is too high and management needs to take aggressive action. The company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high.” Letter: tcifund.com/files/corporatee…

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing tech investors that Gross Margins were more important than ROIC $SPOT

I’ve devoured every piece of content related to Daniel Ek and I can say hands down this is the best interview I’ve heard from him, no comparison. David has a way of getting the best conversations out of Founders (not surprisingly!) and I can’t wait for the future episodes.

A few serial acquirers, last 10 years vs. the $SPY Some of these still have a very decent runway ahead of them.

Buffett sitting on $320 billion in cash:

How did he do it? Focused on 5 Key Areas (from @FoundersPodcast): 1) Lifelong learning 2) He's rich, but was never in a hurry 3) Took care of his health, eats well and exercises 4) Good relationships, spends time with friends and family 5) Treats life like an adventure, has fun

Ok repeat after me: Sum of the parts is meaningless if you’re never going to get ‘the parts’

What are some examples of companies with physical network effects? - Railroads - $AMZN - $UHAL - $FDX / $UPS - $V / $MA

What is the most successful American luxury brand? I can't think of many to begin with.

Good day to remind everyone that being an asshole has a negative net present value. Everything compounds, be kind.

Finally finished reading the Nick Sleep (Nomad) Letters, which are outstanding in every sense. 219 pages worth reading, 13 year track record – 18.4% net-of-fees CAGR vs. MSCI 6.5% I also looked up the US holdings of his foundation today, no surprises… igyfoundation.org.uk/wp-cont…

Patek Philippe: “It's estimated that for a Patek Philippe Nautilus, you could be on a wait time for around 5 to 8 years. In some instances, you may be even watch-gazing for up to a decade.” Marinas: “Hold my beer”

Excellent graphic by the @WSJ showing where the money being spent on a concert is going to across the value chain. (varies case by case but this is the general idea for a big act)

Reddit is such an underrated investment research tool, especially for consumer names.

$RIDE investors right now:

Best selling high-end watch brands: 1. Rolex 2. Cartier 3. Omega 4. Audemars Piguet 5. Patek Philippe (unchanged vs 2021) source: Morgan Stanley

$LVMH organic growth by group, including 2021 comps... insane

I feel like the average IQ of this place has lost ~30 points in the last 5 years. This used to be a pretty decent place to have intelligent discussions and chat ideas.

Controversial Tweet of the Day: Berkshire should acquire Netflix. Solves $BRK huge cash and elephant problem in a sector they understand, while $NFLX can focus on their goal without the quarterly stock market noise/volatility. Ok logging off now, have a great weekend everybody

$SPOT Q3: -640mm MAU +11% -252mm subs +12% -Total revenues +21% fxn -Gross Margin 31.1% (+460bps, premium GM 33.5%) -EBIT margin 11.4% (vs 1% y/y) -Opex down 8% (-14% adj for FX and social charges) Taking a small metaphorical victory lap on this one today, been a bumpy ride

A few takeaways from the Morgan Stanley 7th Annual Swiss Watch report: Polarization continued the Big 4 (Rolex, Patek, AP and Richard Mille) gaining share (+200 bps) and capturing 44% of the market (vs 36.9% in 2019)

Every time I see someone pitch an Auto OEM stock saying the PE is 4x and it could conservatively go to 6x

Regardless of the view you have on $RH stock, Gary's explanation of why he bought back 17% of their shares in the quarter deserves a lot of credit. Crazy how 99%+ companies don't think like this.

The story from the Hermès @AcquiredFM podcast that they hired some consultants in the 70s and they recommended that they should cut prices, increase the number of SKUs and outsource production is the most consulting thing ever

this comment on a recent VIC $CHTR pitch really hits home

Ackman’s best trait is his ability to deal with failure and constantly evolve as an investor. Just incredible.

🐍

$BRK cash

Any good pieces/podcasts on the history and success of $MNST Monster beverage? Trying to reverse engineer how something like this happens...29% CAGR over 31 years (2400x) I included $AAPL and $BRK for comparison, you can barely see them

After 5 years of following the story and understanding the business model, I finally fixed one my biggest thumb-sucking mistakes of omission. Long $NFLX 📀

For your convenience, I've summarized all the tech earnings calls below

A simple yet powerful exercise: If you own 5 stocks for 20 years and: a) 1 is wiped out b) 3 grow at the broad market-rate c) 1 grows at 2x the market-rate You outperform by 250bps annually and 58% total. Not very intuitive. Lesson: long term compounding can hide mistakes.

$BRK outperforming $ARKK since right before the pandemic started. Interesting times. Valuation matters. [Not dunking on anyone here]

Everybody: we’re entering a recession $LVMH: Q3 organic sales were up 19% y/y with strong performance across all regions and business groups

$RH just unveiled its first ever Gallery in Europe: RH England Pictures look stunning (and expensive) businesswire.com/news/home/2…

So let me get this straight: Tomorrow at open $NFLX stock will be ~6% higher than it’s pre-pandemic price (Feb-20) but with 33% more subs and 50% higher revenues. Oh, and also *below* 2018 levels. Mr. Market you’re a manic-depressive nut job.

Interesting recent VIC Writeup on $NTDOY by 08ird (short summary): "Nintendo has already expanded its operating margin from ~4% in FY15 to ~35% today. Incredibly, its stock has hardly seen any multiple expansion, despite numerous value-unlocking events that have happened."

$AAPL Q1’22—These numbers literally can’t fit in your head -Products: $104B (+9%) -Services: $19.5B (+24%) -Total Rev +11% -Gross margin 43.7% -Op margin 33.5% (+3.5%) -FCF $44.2 (+25%) -$202B cash+securities,$123B in total debt -Buybacks $20b (-20%, makes sense given valuation)

It's not everyday that you see a European industrial up 7X+ in 5 years $LDO Bonus points: It's Italian

Which Twitter account is so good that you can get lost on their timeline for hours looking back through Tweets? @10kdiver comes to mind

An interesting exercise, inspired by a convo with @eboroian How to break a DCF: -Operating leverage -Accelerating revenue growth -Completely new businesses -Tons of M&A or buybacks -Issuing lots of debt -Long forecast periods -others? More importantly: which companies do this?

I want to make sure I follow the best experts on here for each sector. Please tag an account below and specify which sector/companies you consider them experts on. Example: $BRK @rationalwalk @ChrisBloomstran Luxury @Retail_Guru @eboroian EVs @forwardcap Semis @FoolAllTheTime

Did I overpay for this or is this the next Margin of Safety? Anyway look forward to it.

Even more insane is that AirPods have higher revenues than the *entire* Recorded Music Industry🤯

I posted the below in an investment forum where someone asked the differences between $ROP and $CSU. This is a very valid question since both acquire and manage VMS businesses. I've followed both closely for a few years and quite a few differences come to mind.

What are the inevitable trends of the next 10 years?