As one would expect from Morgan Housel, the book is very easy to read. It touches on some of the constants in life that may persist for decades and centuries to come. Of course, to understand the future, we often look to the past, and Housel does the same.

If you have read a fair share of/about Taleb, Munger, Naval, Kahneman, etc this book may not present many ‘new ideas.’ However, the way it’s written, and the approach Housel has taken—drawing from multiple disciplines to support his points—is commendable.

I don’t think the book needs a summary, as it’s that easy to get through. Instead, I thought I’d share three ideas/quotes that I liked.

A world of chance

“Some of the biggest and most consequential changes in history happened because of a random, unforeseeable, thoughtless encounter or decision that led to magic or mayhem.”

Housel gives both personal and historical examples to make this case. Consider this one – In a bid to save some money, Captain William Turner deactivated the fourth boiler room on his steamship, for its journey from New York to Liverpool. This would mean that they would still reach Liverpool but a day later. The resulting delay placed the ship directly in the path of a German submarine, resulting in the deaths of nearly twelve hundred passengers. This event played a significant role in rallying U.S. public support for entering World War I. Had the fourth boiler room been operational, the ship would likely have arrived in Liverpool a day earlier, potentially avoiding the submarine encounter and altering the course of history.

I couldn’t help but think about this image by Tim Urban.

Why the world may seem crazy

‘With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is apt to happen”.

“That’s part of why the world appears so chaotic, and why seemingly extraordinary events occur with surprising frequency. With roughly eight billion people on the planet, an event with a one-in-a-million chance of happening daily should affect approximately eight thousand individuals each day, totalling 2.9 million occurrences annually, and perhaps a quarter of a billion times over one’s lifetime. Additionally, considering the news media’s relentless pursuit of sensational headlines, it’s nearly certain that you’ll hear about these events when they unfold.”

A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea
In this chapter Housel touches on how most things have an ideal state and things often break when we try to scale them to a different size or speed. (Scale by Geoffrey West is a brilliant book touching on some of this)

He presents an interesting chart in his discussion of financial markets, showcasing the probabilities of a positive return in the US market over various time frames, drawing from more than a century of data. Basically its reinforcing the idea that the odds of making money in the market increase as we spend more time in the market. I just liked how he presented this data and so I attempted a similar analysis for the Indian market.

The book has 23 chapters. Each chapter is different and makes a distinct point. It’s an easy, quick, and insightful read.

Q3 FY 24 Concall summary

BUSINESS

• Revenue of INR64.8 crores for Q3 FY ’24.
• YouTube subscribers collectively have reached 93 million across all our channels.
• recorded 47 billion YouTube views, reflecting a 52% growth because of Shorts.
• songs released this quarter are 165, of which 82 were film songs and 83 were non-film songs.
• Profit after tax for Q3 FY ‘24 stood at INR34.7 crores versus INR20.2 crores in Q3 FY ’23. That is a growth of 72%. PAT margins for the quarter was 53.5%.
• Content cost for the quarter was INR14.7 crores.
• digital business is around 75%, 76%.
• We have a good pipeline of Ishq Vishk, Buckingham Murders, The Crew.
• Our industry is around INR2,800 crores-odd. three years to five years, this industry has potential to grow INR10,000 crores, INR12,000 crores.
• Even. one song or one promo will be released, we write-off 100% in that same quarter.
• Digital is 75%, 76%. And non- digital, which is live performances, TV, sync rights, all those are 24%, 25%.
• YouTube Shorts is a fixed fee deal.
• YouTube is 45% to 50% of our total business, top line.

MANAGEMENT GUIDANCE

• 100- 125 will be released in Q4.
• Top line 30% and bottom line 30%.
• Meta reels good news to be expected soon.
• 40% – 35% of content we will acquire from Tips Films. And 30%, 35% content we will acquire from outside. And 25% we will create on our own.

RISK

• The promoters have sold around 6% stake in Tips Industries to grow our film production business.
• Promote may sell more stake to fund Tips films.
• Content acquisition is very tough, particular content deserves INR5 crores, people are offering INR15 crores, INR18 crores. So, we are not following that path and we are not bidding anything.

In my opinion the major differentiator remains that Paytm already has its soundbox installed with 1.06 crore merchants. Also Paytm has a large salesforce of 25,000 which serves this merchant base. I have been trying to figure out why would a merchant stop using Paytm soundbox and move to PhonePe sound box. Please educate me what do you think could the reasons be for such a switch.

Hi. I have some disagreement with you on facts.

1. Postpaid loans was not the major contributor to lending revenue. The major contributors are Merchant Lending and Personal Loans which Paytm continues to do.

2. Please confirm which 5 fintechs are bigger than Paytm when it comes to the quantum of loan origination per quarter.

Other than this the remaining post is full of opinion. I hold a counter opinion. But let’s wait for more data to decide.