MONTHLY MULLING 💡
Spot Multi-Baggers, Work Like A Lion, And Turn Off The News!
Hi👋,
Tapan here.
Monthly Mulling is a bi-monthly newsletter sending the best ideas from the web to your inbox for free. High signal. Low noise.
Happy Sunday y’all!
🎉We crossed 200 subscribers! Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, and supported this newsletter!♥
🎄Winter lights and markets are upon us. It’s beautiful out here in London! Last year, I didn’t realise how wonderful London is during Christmas owing to the lockdown but it’s definitely worth the hype! I would love to see what your city looks like during Christmas. You can reply to this email with the photos :)
Currently,
📖What I am reading: How Will You Measure Your Life? by James Allworth, Early India by Romila Thapar (really slowly)
📺What I am watching: Raoul Pal’s Introduction To The Exponential Age (I am trying to deep-dive in the world of Web3 and DeFi. If you have resources, please share!)
🎧What I am listening: Talk by Kodaline
Onwards🚀
💭MULLING
🧠 5 Mental Models To Spot Multi-Baggers Early! by Thomas Chua (Read time: 3 mins)
My friend Thomas wrote a quick guide on patterns/models that you could use to identify good investments early.
Theory of Reflexivity: for some businesses, share price drives capital which drives earnings (e.g. Tesla)
Ecosystem Control: every stakeholder who is locked into a business that is so powerful that it is difficult to unlock from the ecosystem (e.g. SaaS products)
Businesses That Are Verbs: businesses that have become verbs gain a high ROI owing to the word of mouth (e.g. Zoom)
Razor & Blade: a product is sold at a low price (razor) to increase the sale of high margin complementary goods (blade) (e.g. Apple, Gillette)
Operating Leverage: businesses that grow their revenue while the bulk of costs are fixed (e.g. Meta)
We did an episode with Thomas on CBM which is full of investing knowledge. Check it out!
🦁 Work Like A Lion by Naval Ravikant (Read time: 5 mins)
Modern work culture is a remnant of the Industrial Age (so is the education system). It encourages long periods of steady, monotonous work unsuited for the Information age. Naval talked about this in his own podcast and also, JRE.
If your goal is to do inspired work, you have to work like a lion, not a cow.
You need to work in short, creative, powerful bursts like a lion hunts. You shouldn’t work at a slow, tedious, monotonous pace like a cow chewing cud.
But don’t take it out of context, he does specify that you need to be working on the right thing and with the right people. AND you will have to work hard.
However, people who say they work 80-hour or 120-hour workweeks often are just status signalling. Nobody really can work for 120 hours with high output mental clarity.
The way people tend to work most effectively, especially in knowledge work, is to sprint as hard as they can while they feel inspired to work, and then rest. They take long breaks.
You sprint and then you rest. You reassess and then you try again. You end up building a marathon of sprints. (Tweet this)
Inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on it right then and there. Impatience with actions, patience with results.
Anything you have to do, get it done. Why wait? You’re not getting any younger.
You don’t want to spend your life waiting in line. You don’t want to spend it traveling back and forth. You don’t want to spend it doing things that aren’t part of your mission.
When you do these things, do them as quickly as you can and with your full attention so you do them well. Then be patient with the results because you’re dealing with complex systems and a lot of people.
📰 Turn Off The News
I talked about this in my knowledge pipeline article. You need to filter our noise to bring in high signal information. Naval and Taleb have talked about this too.
The current news cycle doesn’t even last 24 hours. It’s not worth your mental bandwidth. Stop reading, listening, and following news channels. See if it makes a difference. You won’t miss the news unless you’re a journalist or maybe a trader(?). If the news is important, your friends/family will tell you about it.
And recently, Sahil Bloom wrote about this.
Do you read the news and how does it help?
📚 TREAT YO’ SHELVES
You can find my favourite books on my site and add me on GoodReads.
I couldn’t finish a single book in the last two weeks (😢). Meanwhile, I took the bait and finally bought a Kindle Paperwhite during the Thanksgiving sale.
😎 A GUIDE TO LEARNING ABOUT INDIA
My goal for this year was to read more about India having realised I was clueless about the history of my own country. After reading about 3500+ pages on Indian History, here is a guide for anyone who is interested to get started on the topic (Tweet the list).
Overview Of Indian History: India - A History by John Keay
Early India (5000BCE - 1300CE): Early India by Romila Thapar
Medieval India (800CE - 1700CE): A History of Medieval India by Satish Chandra
British India (1600CE - 1947): An Era Of Darkness by Sashi Tharoor
Modern India (until 2016): India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha
This is not a comprehensive list by any means and I understand it is biased in certain ways. But it’s a good starting point. Over the next few years, I am hoping to keep increasing my knowledge about Indian history!
🎙PODCASTS
💰 COLD BREW MONEY
If you’re a listener, thank you so much! Can I ask you to share the podcast with one friend/family this weekend? It will really help us grow the podcast. We are now on YouTube too (if that’s your thing)! You can subscribe here.
🧠 #72 – Five Lessons From The Psychology Of Money By Morgan Housel | Book Summary | Episode Page
🤓 #73 – Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Michael Burry, And Mohnish Pabrai Are Buying These Stocks!? Super Investors 13F Filings For Q3 2021!: We discuss Q321 13F filings of US Superinvestors | Episode Page
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