Moving Forward

I suppose you do not notice, but I see it clearly when writing. I’ve been inactive lately on my readings, on my tweeting and everything finance-related. On mid-May, my semester finished and I traveled back to Argentina, where I’ll be staying for the next 2 months. Everything went spectacular and I didn’t even burn out, which is a good sign, but I felt I absorbed too much information. Too much time dedicated to reading and writing since January, so I decided to take an ‘intellectual holiday’.

Now I’m about to travel and stay at Buenos Aires, where I studied. I should be returning to my normal routine around reading and writing (all day). In a selfish manner, as I’m detaching from my usual line of articles, this one will consist of a roadmap for the newsletter. I have a lot of ideas I’ll be trying to translate them into articles in the next couple of months.

52 weeks writing

Next week will be the 52^nd week writing these Sunday articles and I’ll be using the space to share some thoughts on the pure act of writing. I think it helped me in a drastic way. It’s unbelievable the impact it has had on my mind. Perhaps I’m exaggerating or it’s not causal, but ideas and thoughts are much clearer than a year before, they now have shape. Writing has an immense amount of benefits and I’ll be telling my experience on how it made me a better investor (this newsletter is about the stock market after all haha).

End of semester

I mentioned in some occasions that I have a fund, which is something I have to correct as it is not a fund per sé. I, along two colleagues, manage client’s money and have been doing so for the past year and a half, but it is not a technical fund, rather individual relationships. At the end of 2022, I shared how the portfolio was composed (it changed a lot) and how it performed last year. I find transparency vital in these types of things. I’m a human and even though I never share my view on valuations or give financial recommendations, I do participate in the stock market and think sharing it is crucial.

I don’t know yet what that article will consist of. There are two options I’m considering. The first of them is for me to write a single article that shows the portfolio, my overall view of how things went, mistakes to be learned, performance since inception and a bit of our philosophy. That would be an unusually (for Sundays) long article. The second option is to write a shorter article on these things and then take another one to thoroughly go over our philosophy.

I didn’t forget about research

I left Zoetis half done, I’ll try to finish that research for this month. There are a lot of companies that call my attention for future articles, but not sure which will I cover next. Moving forward, I want to dive deeper into the semiconductor industry. You could expect articles on:

• How ASML built its MOAT out of complexity

• Breakdown of the semiconductor industry (long and difficult but in mind)

• Texas Instruments plan and thesis

In parallel, my father asked me to try find good companies in the construction industry (he has a construction company) and learn the fundamentals as well as possible. Therefore, I should be dedicating some time as well to go over some of them and perhaps a breakdown of the industry comes to the newsletter.

Sunday articles

Even though it is my choice, I seriously cannot wait to go back to reading the deeper stuff (papers, shareholder letters) to share them with you. There are no plans yet on those fronts, but I bought two books I’ll for sure be sharing a lot about:

• Zero to One, from Peter Thiel

• The Innovators’ Dilemma, Clayton Christensen

Thiel’s book would be a re-read and a necessary one. I barely remember anything from it. Heard wonders about both of them, I’m sure they’ll prove to be interesting topics for these articles. Additionally, I bought two biographies I’ll see if I can include here:

• Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

• Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight

Personal commentary

I’ve been thinking about the things I have to write about and knew they were a lot. I just noticed they are much more than I thought them to be. Maybe that’s a contributor to this writing paralysis, since I know how much is there to be done. Will try to do it all in the next 2-3 months. From 0 to 1 in the Stock Market will get much more interesting.