Money Concepts

Businesses have to do 2 things well: (1) Raise cash opportunistically, and (2) Deploy that cash intelligently. Raising cash can be done via issuing either debt or equity. A third option is to increase “float” — get customers to pre-pay for their orders, negotiate better payment terms with suppliers, etc. Each has its pros and cons. Managers have to choose wisely. Once cash is raised (or generated via business operations), it can be used in a number of ways. It can just be piled up on the Balance Sheet waiting for an opportunity to come along. Or it can be invested into new/ongoing business initiatives and projects. Or to make acquisitions. Or to pay down debt. Or to reward shareholders with dividends or buybacks. Again, managers have to choose wisely. All these decisions fall under the broad umbrella of “capital allocation”. In this episode, we’ll go over the fundamentals — ie, how business managers should approach these decisions. We’ll also discuss how we as investors can tell whether our portfolio companies’ managers are making these decisions intelligently. Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Charlie Munger likes to say: All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. In that spirit, we want to know how companies typically die, so we never take our portfolios there. In this episode, we’ll look at some of the common ways companies get into serious trouble, which sometimes ends up killing them. We’ll also go over some strategies to make our own portfolios robust to such dangers. Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Jim O’Shaughnessy has had a long and successful career as a “quantitative investor”, or “quant”. He’s the founder of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management (OSAM), author of the wonderful book “What Works On Wall Street”, host of the lovely podcast “Infinite Loops”, and master of GIFs on Twitter. In this episode, Jim will tell us about his Wall Street days and share with us several insights he has gained over the years: - The fundamentals of “quant” investing, - The importance of probabilistic thinking, - How the internet is just getting started changing the world of business and investing — ie, The Great Reshuffle, - And much more! Disclaimer: NONE of this is investment advice. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Gautam Baid is the author of The Joys Of Compounding, a wonderful compendium of finance and investing wisdom drawn from a variety of sources. Gautam lives in the US. But he invests in Indian companies. He’s super excited about India’s long term economic prospects. To help US based investors take advantage of this India opportunity, Gautam is setting up a fund: Stellar Wealth Partners. In this episode, we’ll chat with Gautam about some key ideas in his book, the opportunities he sees in India, and some fundamental principles of running a fund/managing other people’s money. Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

As an active investor, what are all the different things we need to know? I think we need to know: - A bit of economics: the fundamentals of micro and macro economics: how economic incentives and constraints shape human behavior, the history of capitalism and its enormous power to create wealth for business owners, etc. - A bit about how businesses work: how they compound capital and generate returns for their owners, the magic of retained earnings, etc. - A bit about accounting and financial statements: how to read and interpret them, how to use them to distinguish wonderful businesses from so-so ones, how to read 10-Ks and 10-Qs, etc. - A bit of financial modeling: the basic math behind predicting and evaluating financial time-series, cash flows, IRRs, inflation adjustments, etc. - A bit of probability and decision making under uncertainty: the logic behind diversification and portfolio construction, intelligent re-balancing, the pitfalls of averages and expectations, the math of survival (Lindys vs Turkeys), statistical significance, distinguishing luck from skill, the fundamentals of intelligent risk management, etc. - And finally, a bit about our own psychology: common biases we tend to harbor, slow thinking vs fast thinking, survivorship bias, how fear and greed and envy shape our behavior in markets, etc. In this episode, we’ll go over this “curriculum” — the various topics in it and how investors can efficiently learn these topics and put them to practical use. DISCLAIMER: None of this is investment advice. Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com