Reading Time: 5 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Spring is upon us. And spring cleaning is a right of passage we still practice today. It started hundreds of years ago when families survived winter by using the fireplace. Come May, they needed to clean the accumulated soot. Of course, many of us don't have that concern today. But the ritual continues. And our spring cleaning often turns up huge surprises -- things we thought we'd lost or forgotten about suddenly re-appear. We promise to do better;... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Few companies check as many boxes for us as investors as Intuitive Surgical. For those unfamiliar, Intuitive Surgical invented robotic surgery. Its da Vinci system has become the gold standard device in its industry. It's so popular that Intuitive holds a near monopoly position. What makes Intuitive Surgical such an attractive investment is its killer combination of a wide moat and lots of optionality: Wide Moat: Hospitals put down $1.5 million for a... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Let's talk about two destructive phenomena -- one benign, one dangerous. Moths flocking to lights: Moths die by the millions getting too close to light bulbs. Diabetes: Between 1990 and 2020, the incidence rate of Type II diabetes increased by 50% in highly industrialized countries. For over 99% of Earth's history, moths had two reliable compasses to navigate the night: the light of the stars and the moon. Using transverse orientation, they made... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up | Advertise Friends, Picture someone you care about -- a child, a friend, your spouse. Now imagine this person has found an activity that: Quenches their intrinsic curiosity Leads to a deeper understanding of the world around them Helps them connect with others who have a similar passion Is not inherently toxic or unhealthy Makes them money If all of these things were true, would you ever pressure them to give up that activity? We hope the answer is "of course not!" …

Reading Time: 4 minutes View Online | Sign Up Friends, Benjamin Graham is widely regarded as one of the most important investors to ever live. And yet, his motivations aren't what many would expect. He wasn't a fan of visiting management teams; he considered it an unfair advantage that his readers could't utilize. His star student -- Warren Buffett -- later quipped, "Candidly, the game [of investing] did not interest him more than a dozen other things." Graham retired at 62. He was later asked why -- responding:... …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Click here to read in browser. Friends, Susannah Mushatt Jones died in May 2016. She ate four pieces of bacon every morning for over half a century. It's won't shock you to learn that she had high blood pressure. But this isn't a story about unhealthy eating habits. That's because Jones was born in 1899. Yes -- she lived for over 116 years. Her bacon obsession and high blood pressure got lots of press at the time of her death.The rest of her life was unremarkable, so …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Click here to read in browser. Friends, Over the past two weeks, we've seen Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse all collapse. Times like this make us crave safety, protection, and certainty. We start wondering: should I leave my money in the bank? Put it into gold? Bury it in the backyard? Before making any rash decisions, we think it helps to rewind the clock. In the 1930s, when a farmer went bankrupt, the family's home, land, and tools went up for sale.... …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Click here to read in browser. Friends, Our friend Morgan Housel has a new podcast. It hasn't disappointed. He recently detailed the fate of two men who entered a 1968 London-based race to be the first person to sail around the world. Donald Crowhurst had failed in a lot in his life. He wanted to prove he wasn't a failure. But a few months into the race, he sprung a leak. He knew it'd be fatal to sail around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. So he …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Click here to read in browser. Friends, Annie Duke's new book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, is a great read. The thesis: to live a better life, we need to quit most of our activities sooner. But, there's an important exception to this rule. Duke spends a section talking about taxi (or Uber) drivers. Normally, they work until they've earned a set amount of money, and call it quits. According to Duke, there's a smarter approach: On slow days when fares are low, …

Reading Time: 4 minutes Click here to read in browser. Friends, My two favorite sectors to hunt for investment ideas are technology & healthcare (Feroldi here). This is why I've had my eye on Teladoc Health for years. Despite the clear overlap in my investing sweet spot, I never became a Teladoc shareholder. Why? I was turned off by the company's "growth by acquisition" strategy. Teladoc boosted its growth rates for years by making acquisitions. While that caused it's top-line to soar, that strategy is fraught with... …