We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP566: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning w/ Gautam Baid
Episode Date: July 21, 2023Clay Finck chats with best-selling author, Gautam Baid. We cover the passionate pursuit of lifelong learning, how he achieved his dream of being a professional portfolio manager, why he puts the major...ity of his focus on high quality businesses, why India’s time has arrived, and much more. Gautam Baid, CFA is the Managing Partner of Stellar Wealth Partners India Fund, a Delaware-based investment partnership which is available to accredited investors in the US. Gautam is also the Equity Advisor of Complete Circle Stellar Wealth PMS, a portfolio management service which is available to Indian citizens and NRIs globally. Both funds are modeled after the Buffett Partnership fee structure and invest in listed Indian equities with a long-term, fundamental, and value-oriented approach. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 03:38 - Where Gautam’s passion for value investing and lifelong learning originated from. 07:07 - The realization that Gautam had to pursue his dream of managing money and investing in the stock market. 10:52 - The story of Gautam applying to over 1,300 jobs in the investment industry before landing one as a portfolio manager. 14:38 - How Gautam’s book got published by Columbia Business School and became an international best seller in seven countries. 18:43 - Gautam’s definition of a high quality business. 24:32 - Why Gautam allocates the majority of his portfolio to high quality businesses despite their richer valuations. 30:00 - The characteristics of a business that indicate it has high staying power. 31:06 - How Gautam identifies businesses that can earn super-normal profits. 34:04 - Gautam’s framework for selling stocks in his portfolio. 35:35 - The four stages of a company’s growth cycle. 37:14 - Why Gautam looks for opportunities in all areas of the stock market, including cyclicals, spin-offs, and special situations. 49:54 - Why it’s so important to think probabilistically instead of deterministically. 52:45 - Why forecasting the economy, the Fed, and interest rates is a fool’s errand for stock investors. 55:09 - Why humility is required to be a successful long-term investor. 59:17 - Why US-based investors should consider investing in Indian equities. 61:01 - Why Gautam believes that, “India’s time has arrived.” 64:51 - Long-term structural trends currently happening in India. 69:02 - Why Gautam believes that the incentives in the overall investment industry are broken. 72:40 - The differences Gautam has found between managing a fund and managing his personal portfolio. 75: 47 - Why lifelong learning is paramount to being a successful value investor. 76: 28 - How to create an environment that promotes learning. 78: 38 - Three investing and non-investing books Gautam recommends to our listeners. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members. Check out our newly released TIP Mastermind Community. Learn more about Gautam’s Fund – Stellar Wealth Partners. Learn more about Complete Circle Wealth. Check out The Joys of Compounding. Check out Clay’s review of The Joys of Compounding or watch the video here. Joel Greenblatt’s book, You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. Ed Chancellor’s book, Capital Returns. Fred Schwed’s book, Where are the Customers’ Yachts?. Terry Smith’s book, Investing for Growth. Charlie Munger ’s book, Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Peter Bevelin’s book, Seeking Wisdom. Michael Mauboussin’s book, More Than You Know. Check out our recent episode covering the Microcap Investing with Ian Cassel, or watch the video here. Follow Gautam on Twitter. Follow Clay on Twitter. SPONSORS River Toyota Wise NetSuite Fidelity CI Financial TurboTax Linkedin Marketing Solutions Fundrise NDTCO Vacasa NerdWallet Babbel Shopify Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
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You're listening to TIP.
On today's episode, I sit down with Godham Bade.
As many of the listeners know, Godham is the author of one of my very favorite books,
The Joys of Compounding.
The Joys of Compounding is a bestseller in seven countries,
and in my opinion, is a must-read for all value investors.
So I highly encourage all of our listeners to pick up the book.
Gottem Bade is the managing partner of Stellar Wealth Partners India Fund,
a Delaware-based investment partnership, which is available to accredited investors in the U.S.
Gottem is also the Equity Advisor of Complete Circle Stellar Wealth PMS, a portfolio management service,
which is available at Indian citizens and NRIs globally. Both funds are modeled after the Buffett
partnership, fee structure, and invests enlisted Indian equities with a long-term, fundamental,
and value-oriented approach. During this conversation, Godham and I cover a lot. We chat about
where Goddham's passion for value investing and lifelong learning originated from. The story of
Goddham applying to over 1,300 jobs in the investment industry before landing one as a portfolio
manager, Goddham's definition of a high-quality business, and why he allocates the majority
of his fund's portfolio to such businesses, the characteristics of a business that indicate it has
high staying power, why Gottom looks for opportunities in all areas of the stock market, including
cyclicals, spinoffs, and special situations. Why it's so important.
to think probabilistically instead of deterministically, why Goddham believes that, quote,
India's time has arrived and much more. At the end of the episode, Godham also gives our listeners
his top book recommendations, which I personally put a lot of weight on, given his breadth of knowledge
and the number of books he has read over the years. Also, before we dive into the episode,
our TIP Mastermind community recently had a community call with Gottom where members of the group
had the opportunity to ask him questions during a live Q&A session. If you're interested in
being a part of this exclusive TIP Mastermind community and networking with like-minded investors,
then you can learn more by visiting TheInvesterspodcast.com slash mastermind.
We're simply emailing me at Clay at TheInvesterspodcast.com.
Buckle up because Godham really delivered during this episode, so I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books
that influence self-made billionaires the most.
We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected.
Welcome to the Investors podcast.
I'm your host today, Clay Fink,
and I really couldn't be more excited
because I'm joined by Godham Bade.
Godham, it's great to have you today.
Thank you, Ben. I'm in the show, Clay.
Well, this episode really feels like a long time in the making.
I'm such a huge fan of your book,
and I know countless other people in the audience are huge fans of well.
So, first of all, I just want to personally thank you
for making such a huge impact on me and writing the book and then just sharing it with the world.
Thank you, Clay. The love of readers like you just keeps me going.
So to kick off this discussion, I thought the best place to start would be to talk about your
background. You started in Kolkata, India, and now you're in Atlanta here in the U.S.
Talk to us about your journey and where this passion for investing came from.
Sure. So I was born and brought up in a family of four in Kolkata, in the state of West
Bengal in India. I'm the youngest of the four siblings in my family. And my family belongs to
the Marwari caste. So anyone familiar with the Indian community culture knows that within the
Marwari community in India, we have business in our genes from the very beginning since childhood
because we generally tend to embrace entrepreneurship and business. So my father was also
operating a small business since my childhood. And ever since my childhood and teenage years,
I was very fascinated by the concept of entrepreneurship and business, especially by the fact that
Once a solid foundation is established for a business, the owners do not work for money. Rather, money works for them. I did my graduation in commerce from Calcutta University, so pursuing higher studies in the field of finance seemed like a natural extension. So I went on to do my MSN Finance from ICFA University, Hyderabad, India. I went on to do my MBA in finance from NIRB university in Ahmedabad, India. And later on, I also went on to obtain my CFA charter from the CAFE Institute, US. After I completed my MBA program, I got a
campus placement with Citibank in their Mumbai India office where I worked for three years as an
investment banking analyst. And after that, I joined Deutsche Bank as a senior analyst and worked at
their Mumbai, London and Hong Kong offices for four years. Now, all throughout the initial
seven years of my investment banking career, I was making a decent sum of salary income,
but I was not really happy with the work that I was doing because the field of investment banking
is basically characterized a lot by, you know, perverse incentives and incentive cause bias.
and I like to play win-win games rather than win-lose games.
So during this particular time is when my interest in the stock markets and investing in general also went up significantly.
There is a backstory to this.
So just like most investors, I was initially attracted to the stock market during the final euphoric phases of a bull market.
In my case, it was the 2003 to 2007 bull market in India.
I still remember I had purchased a mutual fund called Reliance Power Sector Mutual Fund in late 2007.
and I'd purchase a stock named Espath Steel in January 2008 because both of these
belong to the hot and fancied sectors of power in steel at that particular time. And both these
investments had sharply appreciated in a short span of time when I first noticed them. So I just
engaged in blind extrapolation of the recent price trends in them without paying any heat
or attention to their valuations or business models. And I eventually paid the price because
recency and vividness biases are very powerful but highly costly behavioral mistakes. Both
those investments crashed 70 to 80% within the first 18 months of my purchase and I had
successfully gained my admission into the stock market by paying my tuition fees. Despite this
bad initial setback and experience, my interest and curiosity about the stock markets remained
very high throughout the first seven years of my professional investment banking career. And one
finally, I came to the realization that we just have this one short life to live our dreams and I
did not want to waste any further time working in a field that I was not truly passionate about.
I was so keen for a career shift that in 2015, I relocated to the US without any job in hand.
So one of my close relatives, he sponsored my green card to come in the US.
And I was very firm and adamant that I'm not going to go back to my previous field of work of investment banking.
I want to work as a generalist on the by side in the stock market.
And I was under the impression that since I'm a CFA charter holder and this particular degree is highly valued in the investment industry,
I thought I'll easily land a stock market job.
But as you know, Clay, life is not a bed of roses for those who are trying to carve their own destiny.
I got rejected in my first three stock market job interviews within the first six months of coming to the
US. At the same time, I ran out of whatever little money had brought with me from India.
And to take care of my living expenses, I did not want to sell a single stock from my portfolio of
Indian shares because I did not want to interrupt the process of compounding.
So to take care of my living expenses in the US, I took up a minimum wage job as a front desk hotel
clerk at a hotel in San Francisco, where I worked for 15 months.
in the graveyard shift. Now, for those of you who are uninitiated with this term, the graveyard shift
refers to the shift which runs from 11 p.m. at night to 7 a.m. in the morning. And even though it was a
big challenge for me physically, emotionally, culturally and intellectually, today in hindsight,
I highly value those days of my life clay because for the first time, since the beginning of my
busy investment banking career, I finally got a lot of free time for myself to read and learn. The pace
of work during late night to early morning at the hotel was pretty slow. And I made full you,
of the free time I had to read every single blog article published since since inception
on blogs like stuffel-niveshachad.com, Funduprofosser.com, Sabre Capital Management, he has a
blog called Basehead Investing, Macrocap Club, which is run by Ian Castle, and a blog by
Janha. So the passionate pursuit of lifelong learning at finally began. Now, here I would also
like to share with you just to take a moment out to discuss the importance of passion and the
importance of persistence. I recall, during those 15 months at the hotel,
every single night, I used to apply to a minimum of three stock market jobs online. If you just do
the simple math, over those 15 months, I'd apply to more than 1,300 stock market jobs in the US.
And as you know, Clay, every time we take out the time to fill up the application, attach a resume,
and I click the submit button, there is so much hope attached behind every single job submission.
To face rejections more than 1,300 times and still keep on going, it's only only possible
if you're fiercely passionate about what you want to do in life. So never give up.
because compounding will bestow its magic and benefits upon you only after testing your patience and conviction to the fullest.
Now, luck, chance, serendipity and randomness, I've always played a big role in various aspects of my life till date.
One fine night during November 2016, during the course of my routine online job search,
I just clicked on the quick apply button on a job application on LinkedIn.
And wonder of wonders, I unexpectedly received a job interview call and that too for a senior role in an investment firm,
even though I had zero formal stock market work experience.
And this was the phase in my life, during which I was about to experience the power of
compounding knowledge in action.
You see all those previous 15 months at the hotel, all those hundreds of hours spent
reading all those blog articles and white papers, had now built a strong intellectual
foundation for me in investing.
This is what I was lacking during my first three stock market job interviews when I got rejected.
And this time, I was able to excel in all the three rounds of my job interview.
and I landed the role of portfolio manager at Summit Global Investments,
handling global equity strategy, and it was like a dream come true for me.
Never in my wildest dreams had I thought that I would straight away land the job of a portfolio
manager.
I thought I'll start as a junior analyst, then get promoted to analyst, then get further
promoted to senior analyst from there to assistant portfolio manager, then finally become
a portfolio manager after 13, 14 years.
But this is how compounding works.
The power of compounding is backloaded.
And if you can just sustain yourself slightly more than the competition.
and stay the course, have the conviction, you can make it big in life.
So I worked as a portfolio manager there for four and a half years.
And while tracking global equity markets as a portfolio manager there, India as a stock market,
very clearly stood out to me in terms of the number of high growth opportunities it offered.
So in July 2021, I quit my job at Summit Global to start off my own India-focused fund based
out of the US to bring the India investment opportunity to investors here.
The entire process of setting up the fund, getting all the regulatory approvals took around a year.
And since in July 2020, 22, we launched the fund to the public.
And the portfolio went live on 3rd of October 2022.
And alongside that, this particular India fund, since it was open only to US citizens,
a lot of non-resident Indians or NRIs who live in foreign countries and a lot of Indian citizens in India,
basically wrote to be saying that we would also like to participate in your investment philosophy,
but your fund is open only to the US citizens.
So to cater to the global Indian citizen community as well, I recently launched a Stella Wealth
PMS in collaboration with Complete Circle Wealth Solutions in India.
So both the India fund in the US and Stella VL PMS in India have the same portfolio.
One caters to U.S. citizens and the other one caters to all the Indian citizens living across the world.
Amazing.
I'm sure we have a lot of listeners in India as well as in the U.S.
I want to transition to your book, The Joys of Compounding.
and the very first quote in your book is from Charlie Munger.
It says, the best thing a human being can do is to help another human being no more.
So super grateful you shared all of this knowledge in the book.
And I'm curious what led you to writing this?
Because this thing is, it's not a short book and it's very dense.
It's 400 pages and it feels like every page is just full of so much wisdom and knowledge.
So I'm curious, what led you to writing this and what to the thing?
the process look like?
As with most big events in life, this also has a very interesting backstory to it, which
I'll share with you here. So I joined Twitter in late 2016, in November 2016, to be precise,
and I started posting my thoughts on various subjects like philosophy, psychology, psychology,
history, investing, business, etc. And within three months of me joining Twitter,
two people from India flew all the way from India to Salt Lake City, Utah, to meet me and
actually thank me for the content I was posting on Twitter. They were the ones who suggested to me
the idea of writing a book. They said, you write so well, why don't you publish your thoughts
into a book? Now, Steve Jobs has very rightly said that you cannot connect the dots looking
forward. You can only connect the dots looking backward. For many years, I had a habit of
curating great content into a word document and, you know, maintaining an investment journal
and just collecting my thoughts. I thought, I already have all the content ready with me.
I don't simply segregate these into different chapters and just publish this into a book.
Now, at that time, I basically self-published the first edition of the joys of compounding,
spend the entire initial cost for marketing, production, logistics, distribution, etc.
For my own pocket, and I did not charge any royalty or fee for the first edition of the
joys of compounding. That time, the only idea was give back to the investing community from
whom I've gotten to learn so much over the years. I thought if I can even attract, if the book just
even sells a few hundred copies and if I'm able to at least help a few people and also
attract a few like-minded investors into my circle, that will be a decent enough outcome.
There was no other objective at that particular time. But Clay, when you help others uncondendent,
The universe works in such a way so as to come back and reward you back multiple times over.
The self-published edition of the Joyce Component took off and it sold a lot of copies, gained a lot of popularity in US and Canada.
And in May 2019, I was at Cretan University in Omaha signing copies of the book alongside Guy Spire.
And lo and behold, Miles Thompson from Columbia University Press, is a very big name in the publishing industry here.
He came to, he flew over from New York to meet me and offer me a publishing opportunity with Columbia Business School Publishing.
And it was like a dream come true for me, because for all as value investors, we always have a
quiet dream of working with Columbia someday because that is where value investing discipline
originated with Benjamin Graham. So this was a great example of compounding goodwill and action.
I initially started off with a simple thought of helping others. And eventually, I got this great
opportunity to further expand on that by collaborating with Columbia. And the rest is history.
Today, the joys of compounding is an international bestseller in seven countries.
Amazing, amazing story. In your book, you describe that you want to
own a high-quality business with high-quality earnings growth. And I know you've thought about
this a lot, you know, what constitutes a high-quality business. So I'm super curious what your definition
is of a high-quality business. A high-quality business has got three fundamental attributes.
Number one, the business has to be earning a return-on-capital employed, which is far above
the cost of capital. The difference between return-on capital employed and cost of capital gives
you the free cash flow yield. Number two, the business has to have a strong competitive advantage
or what Buffett calls a moat in order to protect and sustain that high return on capital
for a long period of time. And number three and most important, the business has to have sufficient
reinvestment opportunities within itself at high returns on capital. This is how that
business becomes a compounding machine. Many stocks with high returns on capital pay out large dividends.
They have very high dividend payout ratios, but those kind of businesses are good for preserving wealth.
If you want to grow your wealth and grow your purchasing power over time, you have to find
these compounding machines.
And these are very rare because many of these high ROC businesses eventually end up doing
diversification or venturing into low ROC business initiatives because they want to start building
an empire.
They start focusing on size instead of the economics of the business.
So you have to be very careful and have a razor sharp focus on capital allocation is the
business is following.
And one of my favorite parts of your book is where you talk about how quality is much more
resilient during times of market tribulation. And it's what matters most in retaining long-term
wealth. Another interesting concept is that there's always a market for quality because people who
appreciate quality always seem to have cash at their disposal. Can you talk about this idea of
putting our focus on quality businesses for long-term wealth creation? Sure. So Peter Bernstein
had very rightly said, survival is the only road to riches. And what did he mean?
that. As an investor, how can you be best prepared to handle the periodic severe market corrections
and the bear market crashes, which you will definitely encounter during your lifetime? You ensure
that you have tennis balls, that is high-quality businesses rather than eggs, that is bad-quality junk
stocks, which splatter after they fall onto the floor. So many of us make large paper fortunes
during a bull market, but eventually lose all of it when the bear market inevitably arrives.
during a market crash, both quality and junk stocks fall.
Quality eventually recovers and goes on to make new highs,
whereas junk stocks lie low for many years and never recover.
And how much you're able to recover after a bare market
is far more important than how much paper profit you make during a bull market.
And quality of the business and quality of the management matter of the most
in detaining long-term wealth.
This is why at Stellabel Partners India Fund,
I just don't want to make all my investors rich,
I also want them to stay rich.
And for that, you need to have a razor shop focus on quality at all times.
And you mentioned in your book that you limit second-line stocks to less than 20% of your portfolio
because plenty of rising stars have banished without a trace.
That's a quote I pulled from your book.
Can you talk about what that sort of second line looks like?
What sort of segments or what types of companies are you looking for there?
So second-line stocks refers to macro-gap stocks, deep cyclical stocks, commodity stocks.
You know, basically the returns from tried and trusted frontline stocks may not be spectacular,
but they tend to be more consistent over time.
And in my book, I've talked about this, that once you've achieved financial independence,
it is imperative.
It is very important to realign your portfolio, to have majority allocation and high-quality businesses.
Once you achieve a state of financial prospering life, once you become financially wealthy,
take all steps to ensure that you are not thrown back to the starting point.
And for that, you need to have a razor-sha focus on high-quality business.
in your portfolio. So in my India Fund, for example, since I accept only accredited investors
were already financially wealthy. So those people, you know, already have done well in life
financially. Now, they didn't want to lose all that hardened savings. So it's a job which requires,
you know, a fund manager to understand this and to make sure that the client's wealth is
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Back to the show.
A lot of people when they hear value investing,
they probably just think about companies that screen cheaply or think about Buffett's,
you know,
Cigarba type approach.
What is it about high quality businesses that you pay up for that allows you to,
you know,
earn higher returns relative to the overall market?
Maybe makes it more of a reliable approach than the Cigarba investing approach.
Let's add a bit of text.
to the end of your sentence, over a long period of time, this is the key point, which I wanted to highlight.
The answer to your question lies in one single word, longevity, longevity, longevity,
and that comes from the durability of the mode or the competitive advantage, which the company has.
So this is what allows quality businesses, which have got durable modes, to enjoy sustained
returns in excess of their cost of capital for a long period of time and create a lot of wealth
for investors. Because the moment you invest in a lower quality business, which is earning below its
cost of capital, even though that business may be growing fast, but that ends up destroying
shareholder value because the intrinsic value is reducing with each passing day. Any business which
is earning less than its cost of capital is actually destroying shareholder value over time.
So it's just a matter of time before such kind of businesses blow up because those kind of
businesses will always have to tap capital markets for their financing, for their funding.
They'll have to resort to external capital. And like Buffett says, they have to rely on the kindness
of strangers. You want to ideally avoid such businesses to the maximum extent possible and focus on
businesses which can grow from retained earnings and internal accruals. Those are the kind of
businesses I like to focus on for my India fund and for the PMS. And another concept you talk about
in your book is all the businesses having high staying power. You know, that means they can
stay in the test of time. They can weather through black swan events like a pandemic that comes
out of nowhere. What sort of characteristics show that a business has high staying power and
it's able to weather through any sort of storms that come in its way.
So some of the notable characteristics include having stable product characteristics,
deep customer loyalty, a strong competitive advantage, a growth mindset with a razor
sharp focus on long-term profitability and sustainability, a fragmented customer and supplier base,
a corporate culture that encourages intelligent and measured risk-taking,
a very strong parentage which allows the company to access capital during periods of severe market
stress, a highly liquid balance sheet, and finally, both the willingness and the capacity
to suffer by investing for the long term at the expense of short-term earnings.
Such companies which have got staying power tend to have high longevity and higher duration
of cash flows, and thus they have higher intrinsic value over time.
When we were chatting in Omaha during the Berkshire weekend, you mentioned that the super
normal profits are founding companies that are leaders in their industry and they have little
to no competition. And immediately when I hear that, I think of all the fang stocks in the U.S.
You know, Google, they have had essentially no competition in the search business. They've
been able to earn supernormal profits. And then you can kind of go down the line with the fang stocks
on each of those. Can you maybe expand on this idea of super normal profits with little
competition and how you're able to find such a company in India? I know you're focused in that
country, which we'll be getting to here as well.
Right, clear. This is a very important question. And what matters for successful investing is not how fast a particular industry is going to grow. What matters is can you identify pockets within the value chain of that particular industry which have supply side dominance? You want to look for companies which have got dominant market share and have little or no competition. And why is that? It's because competition acts as friction for value creation. And the best form of competitive advantage is to have no competitor.
in the customers' minds, the brand recall should be so strong that it's very difficult to recall
the next closest competitor. And Buffett has taught us that the true test of a moat is pricing power.
And where does pricing power come from? It happens when the brand becomes synonymous with the product
category itself. So look at jockey for innerware. In India, look at Royal Infield for leisure biking
or look at symphony for air-coolers, or look at Xerox for photocopying in its heydays.
The brand has to become synonymous with the product category.
Then you get pricing power.
And these kind of companies tend to enjoy a strong bargaining power with their suppliers and customers.
And they tend to operate with negative working capital or other people's money.
And how can you identify such companies as a research analyst or a fund manager?
Look for an item titled advances from customers.
When you're reading through the annual report, look for this particular item.
If any companies receiving advances up front from the customer before delivering the product or the service,
it indicates that that business is operating on negative working capital,
and there is something very special taking place in that particular business.
That's how you identify such kind of companies.
Now, when you find the right company that has all these attributes you've been talking about,
a high-quality business, and you end up being right about the company,
eventually the market gets really excited about the business and the multiple becomes extended.
And a prime example of this in the U.S. is the fascination,
and the AI boom, you know, stocks like Nvidia and chip manufacturers and other companies relate
to this are just really taking off.
I'm curious what your framework is for selling or holding these companies when their
valuation becomes extended after you first bought it.
So two-pronged answer to this question.
First one, I'll just answer the first, I'll take the first part.
I conduct a reverse discounted cash flow operation on a tool called the jury finance for
when I'm screening or looking at companies in India.
This particular tool tells me what are the growth expectations embedded in the current stock price.
At the current level of valuations in the current stock price, what is the market's expectations for future growth?
And the base rates of making money from stocks which are trading at more than 100 times price to earning multiple on a one year forward basis is historically very, very low.
And as an investor, what I'm trying to do all the time, I'm trying to have the odds on my side as much as possible.
that's all that investing is really all about a probabilistic bet on what lies in the future.
So I like to focus a lot of base rates.
And so this reverse discounted cash per operation tells me the growth expectations.
I also have the current valuations with me.
If they don't make sense to me, if there is no margin of safety, then I simply make a exit.
The second part to this answer is looking at what stage of the company cycle is the business in.
So every business goes through four stages, basically.
introduction or the early adoption stage, then growth stage, then maturity and then decline.
If you're able to enter into a high growth business at the introduction stage or between the
introduction stage and the growth stage and you have a long runway for growth ahead for next 8, 10
years, even if you pay a very high P multiple or a price-winning multiple, you still end up
making a lot of money in such stocks because in such businesses, the high growth tends to bill you out
even if the valuation contracts a bit along the way. But if you're entering into such highly
evaluate stocks, just when they're about to enter into a decline phase, that is when the sharpest
pace of PED rating happens and you end up with permanent loss of capital. So conduct a reverse
discounted cash flow operation and also check which stage of the company life cycle is the business
currently operating in. What also really amaze me in reading your book was just your
massive breadth of knowledge across various types of investing strategies. You know, we talk about
this quality approach and I feel like I sort of gravitate towards that.
It really fascinated me when you talked about these other approaches. You talked about cyclicals and
commodities and you tell some stories related to some really big wins you had in these different spaces.
So talk about the role that these other sort of investing approaches played for you because
early on in your journey, you were really focused on growing your wealth and growing your
pie and achieving financial independence, whereas with your fund, you're maybe taking a bit
different of a strategy. So I'd love for you to expand on some of these other approaches outside of
what we'll call quality investing. So Clay, my personal investment opportunity said has significantly
expanded over the years with time and experience in the markets. Initially, I started off like all
investors do by reading Benjamin Graham's, the intelligent investor. So I started off by investing in
low price to earning, low price to book stops of inferior quality businesses. Then I read about Buffett,
Munger and Phil Fisher and I shifted to investing in quality businesses at reasonable prices.
But today, it covers multiple ideas of the investment universe including merger arbitrage,
promoter management change, deep value cyclicals and various other investment approaches.
And the reason behind having a diversified investment approach is that big opportunities in the
market can spring up on a short notice.
And in order to capitalize on them in a very big way, you have to have the intellectual and
theoretical framework in place well beforehand.
And how do you develop that intellectual and theoretical framework to capitalize on such
big opportunities?
I'll share a few personal examples here.
So there is a great book on special situations, which is titled You Can Be a Stock
Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt, in which he talks about how you can invest and make
big profits and spinoffs, promoter management change, merger arbitrage, etc.
And implementing all the learnings from that book has helped me greatly in my investing journey
so far.
Same thing with a book called Capital Returns, which is edited by Edward Chancellor.
In that book, you get to learn how to deploy the capital cycle theory and invest in deeply
cyclical businesses for high capital gains.
So let me talk about a past case study from my personal brokerage account.
And this is a stock named Raj Ratan Global Buyer in India.
During 2018 and 2019, the Indian auto industry was in a very severe down cycle and the entire
auto sector was out of favor.
But there was this auto-ansity company named.
Rajratan Global Wire, which was undertaking a very big capacity expansion, since the entire sector
was out of favour, so investors' attention on this particular stock was low. But as soon as the capacity
expansion got over and the auto industry started experiencing a recovery from a middle of 2020,
the stock of Rajatran Global went on to become my first ever 20-bagger in India. It gave more
than 2,000% returns in just the next two years between June 2020 and June 2022. I could not exit
it at the absolute peak, but I was still able to kneel down a very substantial profit on that
particular name. So that's one example of how you were able to employ the learnings from Capital
Returns book into a real-life practical situation and create good wealth for yourself. Now, coming back
to Joel Greenblatt's book in which I learned about merger arbitrage and spin-offs. So I'll
give you an example of a merger arbitrage situation from my India Fund. So the India Fund went live
on 3rd October 22. And around the end of last year, around December, there was a stock called
Equitas holding in India, which was about to undergo a merger with Equita Small Finance Bank at a
2.26 to 1 merger ratio. There was an 18% merger arbitrage discount on the table for the taking.
If you simply had the patience to wait for another six months till the merger got completed.
And on top of that, Equita Small Finance Bank was trading at a very cheap valuation.
So you have the 18% merger arbitrage discount on the table. You're having cheap valuations.
You're having a strong sectoral tailwind in the Indian banking industry. All the elements are in place to
bed big, I made this the biggest position in my fund that time with a 5 and a half percent
weight. And over the next six months, the stock of Equitas holding went on to give more than
100 percent returns. So when you have a 5 and a half percent weight to a single stock in the fund
and that stock doubles, you basically add 5.5 percentage points to your overall funds return.
This was a case study from merger arbitrage. And finally, now I'll share a final case study
on spin-offs or in India, we call them demurgers. So the really big money in spin-offs takes place
when there is an element of force selling.
And force selling takes place in two situations.
One, what I call a market cap demurger?
And the second one is what I call a sectoral demurger.
So there was a situation in March 2020, when you had a small cap pharmaceutical stock
spun off from a midcap parent called Arthi Industries.
So Arthi Pharma Labs got spun out of Arthi Industries.
Arthi Industries is a mid-cap chemicals company, whereas Arthi Farmer Labs is a small-cap
pharma company.
So the moment Arty Pharma Labs got spun out of, its parent, all the chemical sector dedicated
funds, they were not allowed to hold onto a pharma stock in their portfolio.
So they engaged in four selling.
At the same time, all the mid-cap funds, which were not allowed to hold a small-cap stock
in their portfolio, they also started dumping this stock on the open market after listing.
So there was a time when the stock of Arthi-Farmalabs fell to a depressed evaluation of less than
12 times earnings, and this stock has got earnings potential of more than 25% for the next three to five years.
So you're getting a large margin of safety because of four selling from all these institutional players.
So I made this stock, the biggest position in my India Fund in March, 2023.
And the stock in April and May and June so far has risen by the last three months itself has risen by more than 60%.
So the moment you get a large margin of safety in these special situations, you have to bed big and make them count.
Related to that merger, why is it that do you believe there was such a wide discount, the 18% discount,
before the merger occurred.
Because just like in US, we have an example, right?
Look at Microsoft and Activision.
The deal did not go through.
The deal got canceled, right?
So there's always some uncertainty when these kind of mergers are involved.
But again, this is where it pays to be a student of financial market history.
In India, basically, if you go in the past and see which are the mergers, which have been
canceled or called off by the regulators or the government, it's in sectors or industries,
which hold very high strategic national interest.
for example, telecom, defense, those are the industries in which the moment the government gets
involved, and if it's a matter of high national importance, that is where there's a big risk
of, you know, the merger may be getting called off by the regulator.
But in other industries where, you know, most mergers have basically gone through without any
problem, like in this case, the banking industry, the odds are on my side.
And even in the, and see, you want to basically invest big when you get an asymmetric risk reward
ratio, right?
So in this case, even if the merger did not go through, even if I did not enjoy that 18,
percent low risk return, even then I would have benefited from the cheap valuations and the
sectoral tailwinds and the high growth prospects in Equitas for the next few years.
So there was basically less next to no downside, hardly any downside, but a lot of upside,
which actually happened.
And when these asymmetric beds pay off in a very big way on a big allocation, that is
the time when you feel really satisfied and happy as a fund manager.
I think you talked about how something might be a really good risk-reward opportunity,
but there might be a lot of uncertainty related to it.
You weren't 100% certain whether the deal was going to go through or not.
So there was maybe a high level of uncertainty, but there's a low level of risk.
And some people maybe confuse the difference between those two.
Correct.
So basically, here I would like to share a fundamental truth of investing.
No company or no business is 100% great.
And no company or business is 100% bad.
Never think in terms of blackout white in the investing field, always think in shades of
gray. Don't think deterministically. Think probabilistically. That is what all the great investment
history has taught us that they always think in terms of probabilities. And you know, when you're on a
race track, you're not trying to bet on the best horse. You're trying to find a mispriced gamble,
a misprice bet. That is what value investing is actually all about. You want to get more value
for the price being paid with the lowest amount of risk. And at the end of the day, unknown unknowns
keep happening in any way, industry or business. So how do you tackle that? You prudently diversify across
risk factors and sectors. That is the approach you have to take. If you can just survive in this
game for the long term, the force of capitalism is so, so strong clay that you can't help but
become rich over time because of the power of compounding. But the stock market is designed in
such a way so as to basically exploit our biggest weaknesses of greed and fear. And that's why most
of us cannot really sustain in this business for a long enough time. You have to have the calm
and immature temperament and have a sense of equanimity towards market fluctuations and focus on
the business. You have to think like a businessman, not as a stock analyst. You mentioned history,
and I wanted to chat about one of my favorite chapters in your book, read more history and fewer
forecasts. And it was really an eye-opener for me because so many people nowadays forecast
where the economy is going to go, what the Fed's going to do. What really grabbed my attention
was your part where you essentially debunk the notion of don't fight the Fed, which is essentially
Wall Street's of saying the Fed essentially controls and drives where the markets are going to be
heading. So can you explain why forecasting the economy in the stock market is largely a waste
of time for investors? It is because the stock market will always be untreatable, because it is
a complex adaptive system with trillions of moving parts in it. And the way Buffett and Munger
tackle a decision, you know, when they are tackling a challenge or a problem and making
a decision, they ask themselves a simple question, is it knowable and is it important? So where
the stock market is headed, which pays the economy headed, what is the trajectory of future interest
rates, all of these are important but unknowable. I mean, if the Federal Reserve, with its army
of economists and analysts could not forecast in 2020, 2021, what was about to happen to inflation
and interest rates, who are we to make such forecasts on such big, you know, complex macro
issues? I think the best we can do as investors is to focus on individual businesses and their
industry developments. That's the best we can do. Nothing more. So always remain humble.
Otherwise, the market will humble you in the future. You have to just be very, very humble
and grounded in this profession play. Because the moment, you know, success gets to our heads
and we start thinking of ourselves as the masters of the universe and the best investors,
ever after a recent big win, that is when basically we let down our guard and we forget the basics
of investing, the basic tenets of investing with Benjamin Graham has taught us in the intelligent
an investor. So those three fundamental tenants should never be forgotten and we should always be
humble, grounded, have a long-term approach and not to get emotionally attached to stock price
fluctuations. If you have all these elements in place, we're ready to do very well, both as an
investor and as a fund manager. Another thing that really sticks out to me from this chapter
is to understand the incentive structure of the people performing market forecast, maybe it's
you know, some major media news outlet trying to drive clicks.
You mentioned base rates earlier.
In base rates, it's such an important concept because you talk about how, you know,
most macro forecasters, the vast majority of them aren't able to make decisions that benefit them
to, you know, doing well in terms of investing.
And you mentioned humility, to have the humility to understand that if you're going to be
a macro forecaster, you're going to try and time the market, then your base rates,
based on just studies and looking at other investors, your base rates are really low.
Correct.
And you mentioned the point about humility.
So let me quote Warren Buffett here in his latest annual letter to investors of Berkshire.
Buffett is so humble that even at this age, after achieving such huge success,
he says in this latest letter that his fortunes and his success is the product of 12 good
decisions over his investing lifetime.
And he has made hundreds of investing decisions over the last 60, 70 years, right?
If Warren Buffett was telling us that just a handful of good decisions drove almost all of his success
as an investor and as a businessman, that's a reminder to me to always stay grounded in this profession.
And I think that's a great attribute to have.
So, Clay, in my book of it, The Jobs of Compounding, I've written this, that many people achieve success.
But to sustain the same and build on it over an entire lifetime requires a sense of gratitude,
a constant learning mindset, and a sense of humility.
It's very, very important.
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advertisement. All right, back to the show. I love that you mentioned that Buff has said the majority of
success is driven by just 12 investments. And it reminds me of Monash's conversation with Stig here on
our show where he talks about the vast majority of investing success comes down to just a select
handful of decisions. And that's why I really wanted to ask you about your sell criteria, what
causes you to sell an investment? Because, you know, when you find a very high quality business,
It can be really painful to let go of it in case you see it continue to compound for many
years ahead after you sell it.
So I'm really glad you brought that up.
Sure.
So there are three key sell criteria which I follow when I'm investing.
So one is if the management shows a major lack of integrity, that's very, very important because
as with any long-term relationship, you know, the moment, you know, you lose faith in the
integrity of the other person, basically, that relationship is doomed, right?
So just like the same applies to investing as well.
If the management shows serious corporate governance issues or lack of integrity, you basically
sell and move on.
The second one is if the business starts engaging in gross capital misallocation.
So here I would like to emphasize that look at the magnitude of the capital misallocation.
So in the late 1980s, Coca-Cola Coke used to, you know, they opened up a film production business,
they opened a shrimp business, they entered into various other value-destructive businesses.
But because those business initiatives were so small, in the overall context of the high ROC setup business,
So, Coke did not really destroy much shareholder value.
But if the size of the capital misallocation is very large compared to the existing
scale of operations of the business, that time you have to take a dispassionate view
and sell the stock.
And the third reason for selling a stock is if you find a far superior opportunity, this is
important.
It in quotes far superior opportunity to invest in because when you invest in a stock, which
has performed very well for you, delivered good returns and has become expensive, you
have developed a certain level of deep understanding and familiarity with that management
and with that business.
Should let go of such a stock only if you find a very much.
very, very superior opportunity. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to switch for an equally
comparable return opportunity. Let's talk about India. This is the one I'm really excited about.
This is what your fund focuses on, stellar wealth partners. So I'm curious, I'll just open up to
you. Why should a U.S.-based investor won exposure to the Indian market?
Single word answer, Clay. Diversification, diversification, diversification. So from November 2021 to December
for 2022, the NASDAQ in US was down more than 30%, but the Indian index, the Nifty,
was up 4%. A 34% outperformance during a period of severe market turbulence in the American stock
market. And when I talk to clients before onboarding them into my India fund, I always tell them
very frankly that do not expect very high superior returns compared to what you would get when you're
investing in the US stock markets, but treat this fund more like a diversification tool in your
overall asset allocation. So always tell people to have a balanced allocation between.
real estate, gold, fixed income and equities. Within equities, you have domestic equities
and international equities. So within the international equities portion definitely have exposure
to India because India is the fastest growing major economy in the world, offering a plethora
of high growth opportunities. And it's a very resilient, very, very resilient stock market.
So you want to basically invest in my view, US and India are the best stock markets in the
world to invest in period. There is no doubt in my mind about that. So you basically get the
best of both worlds. You get diversification benefit. You get resilience during period.
of U.S. market turbulence and you also get healthy returns overnight.
Munger has said that the first rule of fishing is to go where the fish are.
And you obviously believe there are plenty of fish to be found in India.
And I heard you say in a previous interview, I quote,
India's time has arrived.
So talk to us about what makes India such a great place to go fishing.
So, Clay, no force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come and India's time has
arrived. It took India almost 60 years to make its first trillion dollars of GDP, but it took India
only seven years to reach its second trillion dollars of GDP and the subsequent trillion dollars
of GDP are expected to be reached in much faster succession. If we simply assume the market cap
to GDP to approximate one over the next few decades, one can just envisage the kind of wealth
creation that lies in stores for investors in great Indian businesses. Trillions of dollars.
We're talking trillions of dollars of market cap addition here and which companies will capture
the bulk of this upcoming wealth creation boom in the Indian stock market over the next few decades,
the nation's best managed businesses with proven ability to skill up their operations and to create
shareholder value. Those are the kind of businesses you want to back with your personal capital
and with your client's capital. So that's the fundamental approach which I've taken for my India fund
as well. And here I would also like to add two more very important points. The first point is from
history. So if you look at the stock markets of US, Japan and China, when those economies, GDP,
double from 3 trillion to 6 trillion, their stock markets did not just double. Their stock markets
tripled or even quadripled. And why did that happen? It's because when any nation transitions
from a low per capita income country to a middle income per capita country, the basic spending
on items like food does not go up much, but the spending on branded discretionary consumption
and financialization of savings, these two categories simply explode. So you want to position your
portfolio for long-term success by having a high allocation to these two particular themes.
of branded discretionary consumption and financialization of savings.
Finally, you know from history that one of the biggest drivers of GDP growth in any country
is banking system credit.
Credit is the driver for growth in any country, right?
Between 2011 and 2020, the Indian banking system was plagued by a plethora of bad
asset quality issues.
There are a lot of non-performing assets, and therefore they were very constrained in the lending.
So lending slowed down and economic growth slowed down.
But because of a series of banking reforms in India over the last many years,
the banking system balance sheet has been cleaned up, and now they are very enthusiastic about lending
again. At the same time, corporate India has greatly delivered its balance sheet and reduced debt
over the last decade, and they are primed for a fresh round of KPEX. And again, history teaches
are asked that for any sustained long-term bull market, you need a revival of the KPEX cycle.
So here you have the twin engines of credit growth firing up the GDP and the KPEC cycle revival
firing up the stock market. So both these twin engines are firing at the same time in India right now.
So that's why it's a very exciting time to be an investor in the Indian stock market today.
Outside of India's general growth and GDP and where they're at in their growth cycle,
what sort of long-term structural trends or industries are you seeing that really get you excited?
So first let me elaborate what do long-term structural trends actually mean?
Because these are one of the two key pillars of our investment philosophy at StelliveL Partners.
So our investment philosophy is made up of two key pillars,
variance, variant perception and long-term structural trends.
Variant perception refers to situations where you have written on capital-employed ROC expansion
coupled with earnings growth, you get valuation re-rating, and you end up with multiple
multi-baggers.
And there are various triggers for varying perception, which we follow at still-level partners.
Now, coming to long-term structural trends, long-term structural trends are found in industries
with a very favorable structure.
They're organized like a monopoly or a duopoly or an oligopoly at best.
They are characterized by consistency and productivity of cash flows.
And they have a long runway for growth ahead.
So you can focus cash plus for many years ahead.
They're also characterized by value migration.
So for the last two decades in India,
we have had value migration from public sector to private sector,
from unorganized to organized, from offline to online.
And there are multiple structure of the growth place in the Indian stock market today,
namely speciality chemicals with critical application led by China Plus 1.
Because as the world tries to shift away from China and build a reliable second supplier source,
India is becoming a very preferred partner for many foreign.
companies. Second big theme which were very bullish on at Stellar Wealth India Fund is contract
manufacturing. Because of our low-cost labor advantage, India enjoys a distinct superiority in this
particular theme of contract manufacturing. So within contract manufacturing, you have got
CDMO or contract development and manufacturing organizations which catered to pharmaceutical innovators
across the world. You also have electronics manufacturing services. It's a very, very high growth area
in the Indian stock market. The electronics manufacturing services industry is forecasted to grow at 30 to 40 percent.
over the next five years. So there also you get many high growth opportunities. And finally,
within contract manufacturing, you also have cramps or contract research and manufacturing
services which cater to different industries like agrochemicals. Apart from these
structural growth themes, you also have affordable housing, fintech, branded discretionary consumption,
an isolation of savings, digital transformation. Multiple megatrends are in place in the Indian
market today. Talking more about your fund, I'm reminded that Guy Speer wrote,
the forward to your book. And in his book, he talks about his mistake of not setting up the partnership
fee structure, how he maybe should have originally. And you opted for the Buffett style fee structure
where you participate in the upside with your investors and then you don't get paid if there's
downside. So talk about the fee structure and why you ended up taking this approach.
So Clay, in my book, I've written a chapter titled Living Life, According to Gainers,
scope art in which I've talked about how Warren Buffett, during his Buffett partnership days,
used to follow a highly principled approach for his clients. And that's because Buffett had certain
attributes in him, sincerity, integrity, authenticity, honesty. But as an author, it's not enough
for me to just preach these virtues in my book. Trust is earned when actions meet words.
And I decided to implement those very words into action and just replicate the Buffett
partnership fee structure for my India fund. And you will rarely find such an equitable fee
structure in the investment management industry today. Buffett used to charge zero management fees,
a 6% cumulative compounding hurdle rate with a high water mark provision. A high water mark is
simply the previous all-time closing high on an annual closing basis which the fund NAB has reached.
And finally, he used to charge 25% of incentive performance fee on returns over 6%. I've gone one step
further and improved upon the Buffett Partners FPP structure by lowering the performance incentive
fee from 25% to 20% in order to maximize the net realized returns for my investors.
And I remember again when we connected in Omaha, you had mentioned that the incentive
structure in the investment industry is broken and all messed up. I think your words were.
And you hear all the time that investors should avoid most active investment managers.
Can you talk about this idea of, you know, the incentives being fundamentally broken
and the things that maybe need to be fixed in the industry?
So, Clay, unfortunately, the investment industry has become more of a marketing industry with the sole objective of garnering AUM and earning hefty management fees.
And since there is no skin in the game in most cases by the fund manager, there is zero downside risk.
So basically you're just getting paid through management fees irrespective of performance.
Now, I completely understand that if you're an emerging young fund manager, just starting out, and if you need some money to take care of you and your family's living expenses, you can charge a nominal management fee of up to half a percent of AUM.
But you should avoid charging hefty management fees because then, you know,
over time, these management fees eat greatly into investors' returns.
And the final result is a sub-sad one.
So as a result, only the hedge fund manager becomes rich, but not the clients who are supposed
to become rich.
And there's a great book titled Varaddy Customers Yachts.
I highly recommend all our audience to read that book.
It speaks about the perverse incentives which are widespread in the investment management
industry.
And all of us should educate ourselves on, you know, what are the best practices to follow
and what are the mild practices to avoid.
Since you've recently started a fund and you've been managing your own personal portfolio,
I'm curious, what are some of the big differences in managing a fund versus managing your
own personal portfolio?
There's a huge difference, clearly, there's a world of difference between managing your
personal brokerage account and managing public money via a fund.
The investment process, which you select when you're managing a fund, needs to be replicable,
repeatable, and scalable.
Because you want to basically build a scalable investment process, a scalable investment
architecture because that is the way you build a successful investment firm while taking care
of your client's interests at the same time. So as a fund manager, there are three fundamental
differences compared to managing your personal brokerage account money. As a fund manager,
you put a heavy emphasis on quality, you put a heavy emphasis on prudent diversification,
right? And you also make sure that the service providers, which you select for your fund,
are of very high quality because the last thing you want is a disruption in your daily
operations. You don't want to skimp on paying your service providers well and choosing those
with relevant experience and which are providing you maximum value for money.
So focus on quality, focus on prudent diversification,
and also focus on consistent client communications
and having a good team of service providers to manage your fund
in a very sustained and disruption free day.
I love to talk about lifelong learning.
It's what the focus of the start of your book is all about.
And it's just wonderful in sharing these timeless lessons we could use in investing,
but also using our daily lives.
And one of the key principles you believe in is fully embracing and fully committing to lifelong learning.
And you've stated previously that in order to outperform the rest, you need to outlearn the rest.
So can you talk about why value investing requires a relentless pursuit of knowledge in order to be successful?
Sure.
So let me answer this question through the use of multiple sectoral bull markets in India over the last 27 years.
And this answer will actually demonstrate just why it is so, so imperative and important to be a voracious reader and a lifelong learner in this profession.
Between 96 to 2000 in India, we had a sectoral bull market in technology, media, telecommunications.
So as a investor, if you want to maximize your gains during that sectoral bull market, you would have had to educate yourself on those industries.
Between 2003 and 2008, we had a sectoral bull market in organized retail, real estate, infrastructure,
and commodities. So again, here again, if you wanted to capitalize on those sectoral bull markets,
you would have had to educate yourself on those four industries. Between 2009 and 2014,
we had a sectoral bull market in pharmaceuticals, information technology services, and branded
discretionary consumption. So again, you would have had to reinvent yourself and learn about
two out of these three industries. And between 2015 and 2018, you had a sectoral bull market
in autos, in non-banking financial companies and macrofinance companies. So again, you would have
had to learn afresh about three new industries. And since April 2020, we have had a new sectoral
bull market which has emerged in electric vehicles, digital transformation place, building
materials, ethanol blending. Again, you have had to unlearn and relearn and re-invent yourself
and again start learning on many new industries. So in order to outperform the rest,
you have to out-learn the rest because while investing profession is a highly competitive
intellectual sport and you have to be a learning machine all the time. And if you embrace this
attitude of learning all the time. You can establish a very good long-term track record,
both for yourself and your clients. But you have to have this passion for learning.
Charlie Mangar, very smartly, what he has done is he has reoriented his mind to get this dopamine
kicks or pleasure chemicals released in his brain by learning new things. I think all of us should
embrace that kind of attitude to develop this love for learning and reading. I was listening to a
great podcast yesterday by William Green and Stick, which they were discussing their passion and love for
reading books and for constant learning. And that podcast,
has again brought to the forefront the fundamental principle of success in this profession.
I love for reading, learning, and studying all the time. I think that's where you become
wiser and more rational as a person over time.
And you rightly point out in your book that Munger and Buffett have talked about how they
wouldn't be where they're at today if they weren't, you know, voracious learning machines
because Berkshire Hathaway had to evolve decade after decade as they learned new things.
There's different competitive forces coming at them. And when Buffett first,
started his partnership, he probably would have been upset at the fact if he would have bought
a company like Apple or a company like Coca-Cola. He had to kind of learn new things along the
way and have Munger, help him out. I'm curious, you mentioned the love for learning. You mentioned
that conversation with William and Stig. What does your sort of learning process look like? Do you
have a set time you sort of read or do you just kind of develop a habit? How do you kind of develop
that environment where you're continuously learning?
I think the last part of your question is the most important, developing a conducive environment.
Because first we shape our environment, then our environment shapes us, right?
So very important to be away from all the distractions of the business television noise, the social media noise, the social media noise, just try to avoid all the digital noise as much as possible and embrace what is known as digital minimalism.
So basically, you try to develop a long attention span.
If you're constantly trying to get those dopamine rushes by checking your email or checking social media for likes and detweets or trying to look for social external validation, that is when basically you fall prey to short term thinking and for more fear of missing out.
So avoid those bad habits, focus on developing a long attention span and focus more on reading books and essays and long-form articles rather than tweets and short posts.
Because you know, you want to develop a deep understanding of any subject by going really, you know, devoting a lot of time to it and focus.
on more richer sources of content. So my process is not structured per se, but because of this
attribute of just high intellectual curiosity, I'm always on the lookout for learning something new,
even if it is from the same field, even if I'm reading something on the fundamental principles of
investing, which I already know, it's not a bad idea to keep reinforcing these fundamental principles
in our mind constantly from time to time, because this is what helps us stay the course and
stay true to our discipline and remain disciplined during bull market manias. That is when we tend to let
guard down and embrace, you know, just chasing the latest fad or hot trend in the market.
Just avoid doing that. Stay the course with good quality businesses and pay respect to valuations.
Now, I know you've read a ton of bucks. I'm curious, if you could only choose three out of your
massive, massive library, which three would you choose to maybe recommend to the audience or to others?
So I'll share three investing in three non-investing books with you. For the investing books,
I've shared two of them already.
You can be a stock market genius by Joel Greenblatt.
And the other book is Capital Returns, edited by Edward Chancellor.
Along with these two books, I would also add Investing for Growth by Terry Smith,
because it taught me how to invest in high quality of businesses for the long term.
As far as non-investing books go, I would highly recommend poor Charlie Salmanac,
which is edited by Pete Kaufman, Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin,
and More than You Know by Michael Mobison.
Three great books for developing multidisciplinary thinking.
Awesome.
I'll have to order a couple of those after this.
call. So, Gatam, this is simply amazing. Thank you so much for coming onto the show. Hope to have
you back someday again. Before we close it out, as always, I want to give you a handoff for people
to learn more about you, learn more about your fund, stellar wealth partners, and any other
resources you'd like to share with the audience today. Sure. So I can be connected with on LinkedIn
and Twitter. And if you want to learn more about Stellar Wealth Partners India Fund, you can visit
Stelewealth India.com. And if you want to learn more about Stellivealth PMS, which is a portfolio
management service available to Indian citizens and NRIs, you can visit CompleteCirclevealth.com.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Godham. Thank you, Clay. This was a pleasure.
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