Absolutely. The promoter refuses to answer difficult questions especially on WOS Maiz citchem, where they taken minority shareholders for a ride.

What is the point in having plants across the country if they are not margin accretive.

Too many flip flops from HFCs, Ethanol to now Fermentation.

One thing is for sure… Governance standards are very poor.

Thank you for sharing, sir.

Same as Ever, Morgan Housel, 2023 – I really enjoyed “The psychology of money” from the author and have read and enjoyed a few blog posts from the Collaborative fund blog, so buying this book was a nobrainer. “Hanging by a thread”, the first chapter with the ski accident is perhaps my favourite and I had read it earlier in this post. The book adds more to it by switching contexts to emphasize same point on risk, luck and randomness.

My notes –

• Instead of worrying about what’s going to change in 10 years, its better to think about what’s not going to change in 10 years.

• For Amazon, Bezos would say its impossible to imagine a future where Customers dont want low prices and fast shipping – so its a nobrainer to start investing aggressively on this

• While its impossible to imagine a world 50 yrs from now, predicting that people will respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations and social persuasion is something you can certainly bet on

• Invest in preparedness, not prediction – Taleb

• In a world that tends to get better most of the time, its an important lifeskill to not to move the goalpost often

• People don’t want to just be happy, they want to be happier than their neighbour and there in lies the problem

• Money buys happiness in the same way drugs buy pleasure – incredible if done right but dangerous if used to mask a weakness and disastrous if no amount is sufficient

• Today’s economy is good at generating wealth, ability to show-off wealth and generate envy for other people’s wealth

• You think you want progress for yourself and the world but thats not what you want. What you want is a great gap between expectations and reality (importance of keeping expectations grounded)

• Doctrine becomes dogma if you don’t challenge assumptions

• People don’t want accuracy, they want certainty

• Probability is about nuance and gradation but people pay attention only to black-and-white results and right/wrong outcomes since it requires the least effort

• Not the best idea, not even the right idea or the most rational idea but the one that catches people’sattention – the best story wins. If you have the right answer and you’re a good storyteller, you will get ahead. Even within a good story, a powerful phrase or sentence can do most of the work (Harari or Bill Bryson’s work as an eg.)

• The valuation of every company in the stock market is simply a number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow

• Humor is a way to show you’re smart, without bragging (Twain)

• When a topic is complex, stories are like leverage

• Who has the right answer but I ignore, because they’re inarticulate? What do I believe is true but is actually just good marketing?

• Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe (Durant)

• When anecdotes and data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right (Bezos)

• Economic value – whatever someone wants has value, regardless of reason (if any)

• Stability is destabilising (Minsky). Lack of recessions plant seeds for the next recession.

• Enantiodromia – excess of something gives rise to the opposite (Jung)

• At your highest moment, be careful. Thats when the devil comes for you (Washington)

• There’s an optimum size for all businesses. Push past it and revenue might scale but disappointed customers scale faster (Schultz on Starbucks)

• Radar, atomic energy, internet, microprocessors, jets, rockets, antibiotics, highways, helicopters, GPS, digital photography, microwave oven, synthetic rubber – all came from military as a consequence of wars

• Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist

• Body size is like leverage in investing. Evolution encourages you to be bigger but then punishes you for being big (T-Rex).

• In investing, law and medicine – when “do nothing” is the best answer, “do something” is the career incentive

• What you need to identify are the 3-12 core principles that govern any field (John Reed in book “Succeeding”). The million other things are just various combination of the core principles. Paying attention to a few variables while ignoring a lot of others can make you seem ignorant but that’s what you need to do

• Disagreement has less to do with what people know and more to do with what they have experienced

The book is mostly a rehash of what’s already in his earlier book but its not necessarily a bad thing. Most of my fav parts (~50%) are actually quotes by others but Housel has a way of bringing in the best to substantiate a point. It is enjoyable to read but the book is more like an extended blog post, than a book. 8/10