Links - 1/5/2021
“The one reality that you can never change is that a higher-priced asset will produce a lower return than a lower-priced asset. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You can enjoy it now, or you can enjoy it steadily in the distant future, but not both – and the price we pay for having this market go higher and higher is a lower 10-year return from the peak.” —Jeremy Grantham
Waiting for the Last Dance - by Jeremy Grantham (LINK)
The long, long bull market since 2009 has finally matured into a fully-fledged epic bubble. Featuring extreme overvaluation, explosive price increases, frenzied issuance, and hysterically speculative investor behavior, I believe this event will be recorded as one of the great bubbles of financial history, right along with the South Sea bubble, 1929, and 2000.
These great bubbles are where fortunes are made and lost – and where investors truly prove their mettle. For positioning a portfolio to avoid the worst pain of a major bubble breaking is likely the most difficult part. Every career incentive in the industry and every fault of individual human psychology will work toward sucking investors in.
But this bubble will burst in due time, no matter how hard the Fed tries to support it, with consequent damaging effects on the economy and on portfolios. Make no mistake – for the majority of investors today, this could very well be the most important event of your investing lives. Speaking as an old student and historian of markets, it is intellectually exciting and terrifying at the same time. It is a privilege to ride through a market like this one more time.
Absolute Return Letter - January 2021: V for Vaccine? (LINK)
Death sentence for a corrupt official; Jack Ma; WHO's China visa problem; United Front - by Bill Bishop (LINK)
New Defaults - by Ben Thompson (LINK)
Invest Like the Best Podcast: Ram Parameswaran - Internet Scale Businesses (LINK)
The Knowledge Project Podcast: #100 Matt Mullenweg: Collaboration Is Key (LINK)
Coffee with The Greats Podcast: Bob Pittman - Chairman & CEO of iHeartMedia (LINK)
NPR Short Wave Podcast: How COVID-19 Has Changed Science (LINK)
The Universe is 13.77 billion years old. Probably. Maybe a little less. We're not sure. - by Phil Plait (LINK)
“It is never wise to purposefully do without the benefits of having a mentor in your life. You will waste valuable time in finding and shaping what you need to know. But sometimes you have no choice. There is simply no one around who can fill the role, and you are left to your own devices. In such a case, you must make a virtue of necessity. That was the path taken by perhaps the greatest historical figure to ever attain mastery alone—Thomas Alva Edison.” —Robert Greene (“Mastery”)