The Rob Vinall Podcast

RV Capital's 2021 letter contains a discussion of our recent investment in Carvana, an e-commerce platform for buying and selling used cars. The letter also weighs the relative importance of moat vs execution. It makes the argument that investors perhaps overestimate the importance of competitive advantage when evaluating companies. Execution is everything.

Why investors are overestimating the impact of regulation in China;  Some parallels to a prior market panic;  New investments in Alibaba and Salesforce.com. 

In my 2020 Investor letter, I discussed the concept of “Margin of Safety” i.e., paying less for a security than it is worth, and its implications for investing. This memo is intended as a follow-up to that discussion. It is divided into seven parts: Part 1: Why the importance of striving for an accurate view of the future is not obvious to older value investors. Part 2: Why experience is sometimes a disadvantage. Part 3: Why the opportunity set is different today and what this means for investing. Part 4: Why the goal is to be more accurate, not accurate, when forecasting the future. Part 5: Why skewness matters. Part 6: Why skewness does not obviate the need to calculate a company's intrinsic value. Part 7: What Nicholas Taleb misses.

What are Compounders? Why are they so popular amongst investors? And is the phenomenon sustainable? A critical analysis using a framework suggested by Benjamin Graham in his seminal work on investing: "The Intelligent Investor".

A podcast about conspiracy theories, mental illness, how we evaluate information, and the lessons for investing.

A list of my favourite podcast shows. My preference is for shows about Tech, Health, Business and China that celebrate open and honest debate. 

Rob reads out his 2020 Investor letter. The Letter includes: A discussion of the short attack on Grenke; Some further thoughts on investing in early-stage listed businesses in the context of our recent investment in Slack; A critical look at the concept of margin of safety; A discussion of the pros and cons of being contrarian; How I got podcasting "religion"; Why RV Capital's 2021 Annual Gathering will not be on Zoom.