Sunday Finds + 3 Thoughts From Last Week

Podcast episodes on Squarespace and running a small business

Welcome to Chit Chat Money’s Sunday Finds + 3 Thoughts From Last Week. In this newsletter you will find three topics I thought about last week, links to shows we’ve recently released, and links to some interesting articles, podcasts, and tweets. Check out the archive here.

Podcasts From Last Week:

• Not So Deep Dive: Squarespace Stock (Ticker: SQSP)

• Can Anyone Buy a Small Business? With Paul Cerro

• Investing Power Hour #38: FTX Employees Flip on SBF, YouTube Gets NFL Sunday Ticket, Is Tesla Toast?

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7investing, an investing service where you get monthly stock recommendations, best buy portfolio analysis, and in-depth market research. Use our code “MONEY” at check out and get $100 off your annual subscription for life!

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1. Three Things I learned in 2022

Since I am on holiday with my family and have limited time to write the Sunday newsletter this week, here are three short lessons I learned in 2022. I’m sure some of you already know these if you are more experienced investors, but I’m guessing a lot of you had to learn these lessons the hard way like myself this year.

Ok, the list:

• Don’t underestimate how the market will react to revenue growth deceleration.

• If you are going to buy an unprofitable business, forward return estimates need to be higher than you think because the risk of investing in an unprofitable business is almost always higher than you think.

• If it smells rotten, there is a high likelihood that things are rotten. Trust your gut when identifying frauds, unethical management teams, etc.

Happy holidays everyone! We are excited to keep the show rolling in 2023 and are planning out our schedule for the first quarter as I write this.

See you next week,

Brett

***Our fund, Arch Capital, may own securities discussed in this newsletter. Check our holdings page and read our full disclosure to learn more.***

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3 Good Reads 

• Needs, Wants, and Why We Always Feel Unfulfilled - Pragmatic Capitalism

By the age of 30 I was financially independent. My business was self sustaining, I enjoyed my work immensely and no one could tell me what to do. I wrote a best selling book. I wrote some great research. I spent years training for and finished a full Ironman despite having never run more than a few miles just a few years before that. I had a dreamy marriage to a woman who is way out of my league. All of my needs were taken care of. Life had transitioned into what I wanted. But as I get older I feel that the things I want are endlessly unquantifiable and so after years of feeling like I understood what was “enough” I began to increasingly fail to grasp what that meant for me.

• Amazon Introduces Sparrow - Amazon

In our focus on robotics, we knew we had an opportunity to dig deeper into research and development to support individual product handling. We have millions of products of all shapes and sizes in our inventory, and we recognized the opportunity to invent new technology that could help handle them at Amazon’s scale.

That’s why we are thrilled to introduce Sparrow, our newest robotic system that significantly advances item handling in our operations. Sparrow is the first robotic system in our warehouses that can detect, select, and handle individual products in our inventory.

• Binance’s Books are a Black Box - Reuters

The exchange said it dealt with net outflows of around $6 billion over 72 hours last week “without breaking stride” because its finances are solid and “we take our responsibility as a custodian seriously.” After the collapse of rival exchange FTX last month, Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao promised his company would “lead by example” in embracing transparency.

Yet a Reuters analysis of Binance’s corporate filings shows that the core of the business – the giant Binance.com exchange that has processed trades worth over $22 trillion this year – remains mostly hidden from public view.

1 Good Podcast

• Jake Taylor: Improve Your Decisions - Business Brew

Jake Taylor stops by The Business Brew to discuss his new product Journalytic.  Journalytic is a software designed to help investors improve their process and decision making.  Clear thinking and decision making has been a passion of Jake’s for a very long time.  Now, he is releasing the culmination of years of hard work to us, the public, FOR FREE.  You can sign up at

https://journalytic.com/

Smart and Funny Tweets:

TidalCap @TidalCap

1/n I think Google’s Sunday Ticket deal is misunderstood. Skeptics say "DirecTV @ 2M subs * $300/yr = $600M revenue vs. $2B cost. Google overpaid." There is much more to it. It's probably a pretty good deal for Google.

Peter Zeihan @PeterZeihan

If Argentina could get this excited about accounting, it’d rule the world.

ian bremmer @ianbremmer

just wow, argentina https://t.co/SOMiBQAghc

Buyback Capital @Larryjamieson_

examples of products where the higher the price the higher the demand? Luxury Goods Credit Ratings Elite Universities/Private Schools

Implied Expectations @LongHillRoadCap

Former Robotics Manager at Amazon $AMZN via @StreamRG "For 60-70 years of robotics, item pick has been the Holy Grail of robotics... [It] is becoming real. Amazon has their new system, Sparrow. If you read about it on the news, it's doing item pick."

aboutamazon.comAmazon introduces Sparrow—a state-of-the-art robot that handles millions of diverse productsSparrow is Amazon’s new intelligent robotic system that streamlines the fulfillment process by moving individual products before they get packaged—a major technological advancement to support our employees.

Sean D. Emory @_SeanDavid

Came off a call with a large ad agency: $META Here was the main take on IDFA on any indications of Twitter...

Lawrence Hamtil @lhamtil

My guess is that Toyota shareholders will thank him down the line

wsj.comToyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Pursuing Only EVs“Because the right answer is still unclear, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one option,” said Akio Toyoda, Toyota Motor Corp. president.

chris eberle.eth @defiginger

Last month, we ordered @FiveGuys for dinner via @DoorDash. It never showed up, but DoorDash said it was delivered. The "proof of delivery" photo from ~8pm was a screen cap from Zillow of the front of our house. In the daytime. With nothing at the front door. A 🍔🍟 thread.

modest proposal @modestproposal1

Incredible scenes