I read a couple of really good books on China’s economic system this year that I can recommend for those who want to know the country better (from a distance). The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism by Keyu Jin taught me about mayor economies, and how China’s centrally planned economy is actually executed … More Book Recommendations on China’s Economic System
Modern competitive analysis started in the 1930’s with the introduction of the Structural-Conduct-Performance (SCP) paradigm (shown in Figure 1 below) that was used to analyse the causal dynamics of Industrial Organisation, the field of study concerned to a large extent with how public policy can limit monopoly power. The SCP paradigm has since evolved into … More Competitive Strategies: Structures and Power
I wrote the following comments very quickly on LinkedIn about 10 days ago in the middle of the DeepSeek frenzy, and the post turned out to be my second most-read post ever and people continues to look at it. I think the comments are holding up well so I am sharing them here as well, … More DeepSeek and All That
With NVIDIA seemingly steaming ahead in their latest quarterly result, Apple Intelligence receiving a lukewarm response from users, Wall Street increasingly worried about the return-on-investment from the hyperscalers’ massive capital investments, stories that CIOs are struggling to find ROI for AI, and news in the last two days that Intel and Samsung are both struggling … More Winners and Losers in the AI Commercial Landscape
This blog post Sizing up the New Axis by Noah Smith that compares the combined economic strength of China and Russia against that of US and its key allies provides interesting insights into the robustness of the industrial base and manufacturing supply chains of the two blocs. On energy supply, which includes fossil fuels and … More A Short Look at Geoeconomics
A friend sent me Safi Bahcall’s book “Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Disease, and Transform Industries” a couple of months ago. It’s a fascinating book with many interesting ideas and stories, the most important of which is (arguably) the Innovation Equation, a model that seeks to explain, in a … More Safi Bahcall’s Innovation Equation
While going through some old documents this week, I rediscovered a set of notes I took while reading Michael Porter many years ago. On rereading the notes, I find (again) his ideas to be really simple and compelling, worthy of sharing as a mental model for both practising data scientists and a value investors. A … More Understanding Industry Structure and Competition
The best investments I have made over the years tend to be the ones where the investment case is really simple and obvious, requiring only basic common sense and at best secondary-school arithmetic. In almost every case, the opportunity presented itself in a wider market downturn and the main thing I had to overcome to profit … More Opportunities of a Life Time?
Back in Sep 2015, I wrote this article outlining the investment case for SJM Holdings. The story is simple: the Macau gaming revenue had more than halved by Sep 2015 from a peak in early 2014 because of the corruption crackdown in China, sending Macau gaming stocks crashing more than 70% in some cases; the long-term fundamentals … More SJM Holdings: Hanging On or Cashing Out?
I have paid more than my fair share of bank fees in doing international fund transfers over the years. The (transparent) transaction fees charged by banks have come down significantly in the last few years and are now usually a small component of the overall cost but the hidden fees, in the form of an … More Low-cost Hassle-free International Fund Transfer
Mental Models 4 Life 