Author Archives: Edward Brownlee

Four Dollar a Day Coffee

Posted on by

“Your four-dollar-a-day coffee habit is going to cost you $51,833.79 in twenty years.” ~ Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect

Did you know that every dollar you spend today, no matter where you spend it, is costing you nearly five dollars in only twenty years (and ten dollars in thirty years)?

That’s because if you took a dollar and invested it at 8 percent, in twenty years, that dollar would be worth almost five dollars. Every time you spend a buck today, it’s like taking five dollars out of your future pocket.”

Source:  Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect

Belief Equals Performance

Posted on by

What You Believe + How You Feel = How You Perform

There exist a strong direct connection between self-belief, emotions, and performance—and it’s something you can intentionally cultivate every day.

The Power of Self-Belief

Believing in yourself isn’t just a good idea; it’s a proven performance booster. When you trust your abilities, you approach challenges with confidence, persistence, and creativity. This mindset helps you:

• Take action even when you’re uncertain
• Bounce back from setbacks
• Stay motivated to pursue your goals

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, often emphasizes that identity shapes behavior: if you see yourself as someone who is capable and resilient, you’ll naturally act in ways that reinforce that belief.

What You Believe + How You Feel = How You Perform

Your emotional state is like the fuel in your tank. When you feel positive, energized, and confident, you’re more likely to:

• Focus deeply
• Solve problems creatively
• Interact positively with others

On the other hand, self-doubt and negativity can drain your energy and cloud your judgment.

Small Daily Improvements

You don’t have to overhaul your mindset overnight. Try these small, daily actions to boost your self-belief and emotional state:

• Celebrate tiny wins: Acknowledge even the smallest progress.
• Positive self-talk: Replace “I can’t” with “I’m learning.”
• Visualize success: Spend a minute each day picturing yourself achieving your goals.
• Mindful moments: Pause to check in with your feelings and reset your focus.

Believing in yourself is a habit you build, one day at a time. How you feel shapes how you perform—so nurture both your mindset and your emotions, and you’ll see your performance soar!

Nobody Knows the Future

Posted on by

One of super-investor Howard Mark’s favorite investment truths is:

“You can’t analyze the future.”

He stated that the future is entirely unknown and hasn’t happened yet. And, it’s too complex, too uncertain to predict with certainty. Anyone acting with certainty is probably wrong.

Nobody knows the future, not the Fed, not economists, not smart money investors. Forecasts by financial news “talking heads and financial experts” are, at best, informed guesses and opinions, often dressed up in confidence.

Moreover, no one can successfully “time the market” over the long term.

Marks warns against the common retail investor mindset: “…waiting for the dust to settle.”

This strategy by investors of “waiting for volatility to calm” may sound cautious, but it’s dangerous. By the time things feel “safe,” the market has likely recovered and you’ve missed the best opportunities.

For example, back in 2007 – 2008, nobody knew what would happen in the upcoming months regarding the Financial Crisis.

When there was economic panic and fear everywhere in calendar year 2008, Howard Marks invested. He invested not because he knew things would get better, but because betting on the end of the world rarely pays off. In his informed view:

“Most of the time, the world doesn’t end.”

So what should retail investors do?

“When the time comes to buy, you won’t want to.”

Marks concludes that fear creates opportunities.
If you wait until the news is good and the outlook is clear, you’re already late.

Bottom-line, the best investments should feel uncomfortable when you make them.

Source:  https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/uncertainty.pdf

Health Benefits of Yoga!

Posted on by

“Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar:

Yoga is a great practice for both the body and the mind, it offers peace and mindfulness to its practitioners and helps them get through daily stress. Regardless of your level of yoga expertise, if you’re practicing regularly, you can feel better from head to toe.

Yoga offers physical and mental health benefits for people of all ages. Yoga is as good for improving mobility in people with lower back pain. The American College of Physicians recommends yoga as a first-line treatment for chronic low back pain.

Yoga offers a wide range of significant benefits for both physical and mental health:

Physical Benefits

• Improves flexibility and balance: Regular stretching in yoga enhances muscle flexibility and body balance, which is especially beneficial as people age.
• Builds muscle strength: Many poses require supporting your body weight, strengthening arms, legs, core, and back muscles.
• Enhances posture: Stronger core and back muscles help maintain better posture in daily life.
• Supports bone and joint health: Weight-bearing poses strengthen bones and improve joint function by promoting fluid release and muscle support.
• Boosts cardiovascular health: Some vigorous yoga styles raise heart rate into aerobic range, lowering heart disease risk and improving blood pressure and lipid profiles.
• Improves breathing and lung capacity: Deep, mindful breathing in yoga enhances respiratory function and endurance.

Mental and Emotional Benefits

• Reduces stress and anxiety: Yoga promotes relaxation and mindfulness, helping manage stress and improve mental health.
• Enhances mindfulness and self-awareness: Yoga increases body awareness and mindful eating, fostering a positive relationship with food and body image.
• Improves sleep quality: Regular practice supports better sleep patterns.
• Builds a supportive community: Group classes reduce loneliness and provide social support.
• Promotes better self-care and emotional stability: Yoga cultivates steadiness in mind and body, improving overall well-being and resilience.

Numerous studies have demonstrated yoga’s benefits in arthritis, osteopenia, balance issues, oncology, women’s health, chronic pain and other specialties. Overall, yoga is a holistic practice that improves physical fitness, mental clarity, emotional balance, and social connection.

Source:  https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/9-benefits-of-yoga

Life’s Words of Wisdom

Posted on by

1. Don’t blame a clown for acting like a clown, ask yourself why you keep going to the circus. 🤡

2. You are never destroyed by anyone except yourself. 

3. The cost of never taking a risk is spending the rest of your life wishing you had. 

4.  Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.

5. Instead of fighting the world, kill your ego.

6. A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

7. Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.☠️

8. Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.

9. Damaged people are dangerous. They know how to make home fell like hell.

7. Pain builds you; comfort weakens you.

8. You can’t change the people around you; but you can change the people around you. 

9. A ship is safe in harbor but that is not what ships are built for.🛳️

10. The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

11. The cruelest people say “I am just being honest.”

 

100 to 1 in the Stock Market

Posted on by

“The reason that more people don’t make 10,000% on their money is that they don’t set their goals high enough!” ~ Thomas W. Phelps

100 to 1 in the Stock Market by Thomas W. Phelps, was an investment book published in 1972. It outlines a buy-and-hold long-term investment strategy aimed at turning $1 into $100 or more—a 10,000% return—by holding stocks for the long term.

Key Points of the Strategy:

• Ultra-Long-Term Holding: Phelps advocates never selling, emphasizing patience and allowing compounding to work over decades.
• Stock Selection: The strategy requires identifying companies with strong business models and growth potential, not necessarily buying at the lowest price or during an IPO.
• Historical Success: Phelps found over 350 stocks between 1932 and 1971 that could have turned $1 into $100 or more, with at least one such stock every year.
• Why It’s Rare: Most investors sell too soon, seeking quick profits, and do not set such ambitious goals. Phelps believed that setting high goals and holding on is key to extraordinary returns.
• Tax Efficiency: Holding stocks indefinitely can defer or avoid capital gains taxes, passing wealth on to heirs.

Modern Examples:

Companies like Home Depot, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and NVIDIA have delivered 100-to-1 returns to long-term investors in recent decades.

Core Lessons:

• Patience and conviction are crucial.
• Identify companies with durable competitive advantages (“moats”) and strong growth prospects.
• Avoid frequent trading and short-term thinking.
• A stock should be bought when the company is still small and undiscovered by the masses. Small companies grow faster.
• Seek out “gates,” which are barriers to entry or moats. Patents and market leadership are valuable here.
• Earnings growth is essential.  You want to find the most profitable businesses, where earnings are growing fast.
• There is value of buying when stocks are temporarily depressed . . . as they were in 1932 and, more recently, in 2002, 2008 and 2020.

This investment strategy remains contrarian in an era of rapid trading, but the underlying logic—compounding and patience—still applies. The most important aspect of all in the 100 to 1 in the Stock Market equation, however, is time. Mr. Phelps conveyed, “Perhaps the greatest advantage of all in buying top-quality stocks without visible ceilings on their growth is that when we do so we give ourselves the chance to profit by the unforeseeable and the incalculable.”

Source:  https://www.cabotwealth.com/daily/stock-market/100-to-1-in-the-stock-market

Investing the Warren Buffett Way

Posted on by

“Every investment is the discounted value of all future cash flow.”

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett states that he doesn’t care if a company market capitalization is large cap, middle, small or micro cap. It makes no difference. See’s Candy at $25M was micro when he bought it.

The only questions that matter when investing are:

1. Does he understand the business
2. Does he like and trust the people running it
3. Is the price attractive

Buffett’s focus has never been on market cap size—it’s about quality, trust, and value. Whether it’s a $25M candy shop or a $25B insurer, the playbook stays the same: understand it, trust the team, and don’t overpay.

Market cap is a label. Fundamentals are the substance. Every investment should pass those 3 filters.

 

Investing: High CAGR, High ROIC, and Low WACC

Posted on by

“Every investment is the present value of all future cash flow.” — Everyday Money 

The value of any investment is determined by discounting all expected future cash flows (both inflows and outflows) to their present value using an appropriate discount rate. This process accounts for the time value of money, which recognizes that money available today is worth more than the same amount in the future due to its potential earning capacity.

Regarding stock investments, there are very few public companies that consistently have these four important metrics (high CAGR, high ROIC, low WACC, and high free cash flow growth), which indicate the potential for long-term growth and appreciation,

Key Metrics:

• High CAGR: Indicates strong revenue or profit growth over a specific number of years.
• High ROIC: Shows efficient use of capital to generate profits.
• Low WACC: Suggests lower financing costs, making growth more valuable.
• High Free Cash Flow Growth: Reflects increasing cash available for investment or shareholder returns.

Public companies with exceptionally high return on invested capital (ROIC) are typically terrific long term investment. High ROIC indicates that a company is efficient in utilizing capital by generating substantial revenue growth and returns well above its cost of capital.

ROIC that far exceeds its weighted average cost of capital (WACC) means the company is not just profitable, but also highly efficient at converting invested capital into profits—every dollar invested yields a much higher return than the company’s cost to raise and deploy that capital.

Investors value companies with high ROIC because they are seen as more likely to create shareholder value over the long term.

Companies with strong ROIC, combined with robust earnings, sales, and cash flow growth, can signal the potential for continued stock price appreciation and makes it attractive to both growth and value investors. Since investing is the effectively the discounted present value of all future cash flow.

Investing is fundamentally about estimating and valuing all future cash flows in today’s dollar terms, accounting for risk and the opportunity cost of capital. The value of an investment is determined by the sum of its expected future cash flows, adjusted for the time value of money by discounting them to the present.

Moreover, a high ROIC is often associated with competitive advantages, pricing power, and efficient management, all of which support a higher valuation multiple for the company.

Definitions:  CAGR (compound annual growth rate), ROIC (return on invested capital), WACC (weighted average cost of capital).

Getting 1% Better Everyday

Posted on by

“If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.” — Jmes Clear

The goal or strategy of getting 1% better every day is a powerful mindset for personal growth and long-term success. The concept is simple: instead of aiming for massive, immediate changes, you focus on making small, consistent improvements each day. Over time, these tiny gains compound, leading to significant progress.

Example:

If you improve by just 1% each day, you’ll be nearly 37 times better after one year (thanks to the power of compounding: 1.01^365 ≈ 37.78).

Why Does It Work?

• Sustainable: Small changes are easier to stick with than drastic overhauls.
• Motivating: Progress is visible and measurable, which keeps you motivated.
• Compounding Effect: Tiny gains accumulate and multiply over time.

How to Apply the 1% Better Mindset

1. Set Clear, Small Goals

• Break down big ambitions into daily, manageable actions.
• Example: Want to read more? Start with 5 pages a day.

2. Track Your Progress

• Use a journal, app, or habit tracker.
• Celebrate small wins to stay motivated.

3. Reflect and Adjust

• At the end of each day, ask: “What did I do 1% better today?”
• Identify what worked and what you can tweak.

4. Be Patient and Consistent

• Results won’t be instant, but consistency will pay off.
• Remember: It’s about progress, not perfection.

Areas to Apply This Mindset

• Health: Exercise a little more, eat one healthier meal, improve sleep habits.
• Learning: Study a new word, practice a skill, read an article.
• Work: Organize your desk, automate a task, improve communication.
• Relationships: Listen more, express gratitude, reconnect with a friend.

Author James Clear explains that making 1% improvements each day over time, these small gains compound and lead to remarkable long-term results. If you get 1% better every day for a year, you become about 37 times better by the end of the year.

This compounding effect is similar to how money grows with compound interest—the benefits of good habits multiply as you repeat them, while the costs of bad habits also accumulate if you get 1% worse each day. The real impact of these tiny changes is only visible after months or years, creating a significant gap between those who make small positive choices and those who do not

“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
— James Clear, Atomic Habits

Final Thoughts

Focusing on getting 1% better every day is a simple but profound way to achieve lasting improvement. Start small, be consistent, and watch your efforts compound into extraordinary results!

The Next Palantir – Part 2

Posted on by

The following companies challenge Palantir dominance across government, defense, and commercial markets, offering alternative platforms for big data integration, analytics, and AI.

Palantir’s main competitors include AI software, data analytics, cloud platforms, and defense technology. Key competitors include:

C3.ai is a direct rival in AI-driven enterprise software, often compared to Palantir for its data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions.

Salesforce and Alphabet compete in AI-enhanced analytics and workflow automation.

Additionally, companies such as Snowflake, CrowdStrike, Cloudflare, SAP, Atlassian, and Alteryx compete in data analytics, cybersecurity, and enterprise software markets.