At Porter & Co. we are determined to be your best source of investing, economic, and financial insight, and your first choice for information about what to do with your money… in the entire world, bar none.
This is Porter & Co.’s Sunday Investment Chronicles. Every week, the Porter & Co. research team pores over thousands (and thousands) of articles, reports, social media posts, analyses, regulatory filings, and anything else we can get our hands (and eyes) on to understand what’s happening in the world of investing and finance – and to uncover the most original, compelling, and double-head-fake ideas…
… and we curate the best of those here. We do it all the old fashioned way: Hours of reading and brainpower (no AI curation here). We read everything – for you.
In Case You Missed It
This week at Porter & Co., Distressed Investing analyst Marty Fridson guest starred in two issues of the Daily Journal… On Monday, by special arrangement, we released an excerpt of a new book on corporate finance that features an entire chapter – entitled “Martin Fridson, The Extraordinary Success Of The High-Yield Bond Market, And The Leveraging Of Corporate America” – about Fridson… you can read the full chapter of Douglas H. Chew Jr.’s The Making Of Modern Corporate Finance here. And on Wednesday, Marty wrote about a legendary period of Wall Street lore for which he had a front-row seat: the gambling game liar’s poker, which was immortalized in Michael Lewis’ 1989 book of the same name… and how the BSDs of the era were defeated in the trading floor game.
On Thursday in The Big Secret On Wall Street, we wrote about a stock that’s been one of the best investments of the past two decades (and which has powered the returns of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway)… but which is losing its swagger as it faces weak revenue growth, AI challenges, and is overdosing on share buybacks. Apple is losing its luster…
And on Friday… Porter dissected a Buffett failure… the world’s best investor, Porter wrote, “has frequently made huge and disastrous investments in energy.” He explained…
Here’s an interesting fact: Buffett’s massive losses on energy have made Berkshire’s return on assets (ROA) decline over the last 25 years. And, unless Berkshire is broken up, these declines are going to accelerate going forward.”
What to do?… “The solution? To me, it’s obvious. The energy assets and the railroad need to be spun off”… and
The investment portfolio and the insurance companies (which must be funded with equity) should retain the Berkshire Hathaway name and they should resume its former strategy – funding a world-class investment portfolio with ‘float’ generated from high-quality property & casualty stocks.”
Read more about what Porter thinks here.
On Saturday, in our Stock Screen, we sifted through disclosures of recent stock purchases by some of the world’s best investors… and (for Partner Pass members) we highlighted one particular buy, which is in the same sector as a recent addition to the Big Secret’s portfolio.
And finally… Yesterday, Warren Buffett released his much-anticipated annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. After reviewing Buffett’s letter, Porter analyzed it, live on camera, and shared his thoughts exclusively with Partners.
The Best Things We Read Last Week
Out of the hundreds of sources of investment, finance, and economics news and insight we regularly review – our Bloomberg terminal, hedge-fund letters, annual reports, the financial news media, Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) filings, investment newsletters, newspapers, X (Twitter) threads, conferences, podcasts, and more – here’s what we’ve read that we think you might find interesting.
(Note: Quotes, transcripts, and excerpts are generally reproduced as they appear in the original.)
Markets And Economics
The Legends Speak
Investment Ideas
Government Bonds And Credit
Real Estate
Special Situations: Activist Investing, Spinoffs, Arbitrage, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), And More
Precious Metals
Bitcoin And Crypto
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