Burn It to the Ground
Walter Isaacson is a good author.
Not because his books are big, but because of the breadth of biographical digging he surfaces to readers.
My first introduction to Isaacson was Steve Jobs, shortly after the Apple ($AAPL) co-founder passed away.
But Isaacson has also written bios on Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and the last book I’ve read on Leonardo da Vinci.
Coincidentally, after watching Leonardo DiCaprio co-star in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on Sunday, I learned that Paramount Pictures and Leo’s production company, Appian Way, have the rights to the da Vinci’s book:
A few of the things I immediately learned about da Vinci were: he was probably gay, he had a big team of apprentices who helped him paint, sometimes on his behalf, and he procrastinated… a lot.
If you’ve read my content for a while, you might’ve gotten accustomed to getting a daily update each day.
But my Summer schedule got out of my control this past month.
That’s an excuse, and it’s not a good one.
Today, the United States Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter-point:
“The last time the Fed cut rates, in December 2008, the U.S. economy was deep in the financial crisis. The stock market had shed a third of its value in a matter of weeks, and unemployment was over 7 percent. Today the economy is widely viewed as healthy, with unemployment at a half-century low, stocks at record highs and inflation remaining modest.
Fed leaders have characterized this rate reduction as an ‘insurance’ cut to enhance the economy’s strength in the face of growing problems abroad that could spill over into the United States. The Fed pointed to ‘soft’ business investment and declining manufacturing output as areas of particular concern.”
To be honest, I don’t care, though it won’t stop the media from making new predictions on what this means for the second half of 2019 economically.
Here’s all I care about: identifying good young companies, learning about their business models, and investing proportionally with a long-term mindset.
Was I happy with my 31.23% return this year from January to June? Yes.
But July made me think a lot about what I’ve missed.
So, I made some (new) buying decisions:
- CrowdStrike ($CRWD) — $73 per share but should’ve bought more shares
- Splunk ($SPLK) — $136.58 per share after not buying new shares since January 2017
- Okta ($OKTA) — $130 per share after buying a small stake this past January
- ZenDesk ($ZEN) — $90 per share after procrastinating on this company for almost a year
- Twilio ($TWLO) — $139.90 per share after originally buying at $28.50 per share and selling at $29.64 [my worst decision this decade]
- Crispr ($CRSP) — $50 per share after convincing myself on the growth potential of gene editing
Now, just because I ate a Beyond Meat ($BYND) breakfast sandwich on Saturday from Dunkin’ ($DNKN) doesn’t mean I’m buying shares in either.
But if you’re wondering: yeah, it was pretty good.
Here’s my self-induced homework for August:
- Adobe ($ABDE)
- Editas Medicine ($EDIT)
- Fair Isaac ($FICO)
- Masimo ($MASI)
- Paycom ($PAYC)
- RingCentral ($RNG)
- Zoetis ($ZTS)
You probably already know what Adobe does:
But you may be unfamiliar with the other companies on the list.
Yeah, me, too.
After I re-read this David Perell blog post on how to cure writer’s block, I’ll share new thoughts on what I’m hoping to buy next:
“[Kendrick Lamar’s] strategy is simple. The human mind works by association. The mind looks for trails of thought, and once they find one, good ideas create more good ideas.
World-class writers don’t have their best ideas by staring at the blank page in front of them. The more time Kendrick spends meeting people, traveling, exploring his old neighborhood, or talking to children, the better his music.
[A] fresh insight is a fragile thing, so Kendrick is a prolific note-taker. Ideas are perishable. His pen preserves what his memory forgets. When an idea isn’t saved, it starts to decay. But once his pen stops dancing across the page in front of him, he returns to the activity before him.
Small actions done repeatedly have transformative long-term benefits. Today, I live my life in pursuit of creative supplies. If I save three ideas per day, I’ll have 1,000 by the end of the year.”
