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China ranks 86th in UN World Happiness Report (Link)
China ranked 86th - below 70th ranked Libya and 59th ranked Russia! The report noted Chinese rural households were much happier than urban households despite lower incomes. With the economy still growing at high levels you wonder why happiness is decreasing? Not too far behind China, is Venezuela, which is now ranked 102nd in the world down from 20th only 5 years ago.
The greatest investor you’ve never heard (Link)
Herb Wertheim may be the greatest individual investor the world has never heard. This once optometrist is a testament to the power of compounding as well as to the resilience of American innovation. Like Warren Buffett, Wertheim believes firmly in doubling down when his high-conviction picks go against him. Instead of concentrating on the metrics in financial statements, Wertheim is devoted to reading patents and spends two six-hour blocks each week poring over technical tomes. “What’s more important to me is, what is your intellectual capital to be able to grow?” Thanks to his engineering background, the technical nature of optometry and his experience as an inventor, the patent library is Wertheim’s comfort zone. Stocks he invested in based on their impressive patent portfolios include IBM, 3M and Intel.“If you like something at $13 a share, you should like it at $12, $11 or $10 a share, and if a stock continues to go down, and you believe in it and did your research, then you buy more”.
You likely know Jim Collins from one of his eight books, including Good to Great. Jim seldom gives interviews, so this is a rare window into an especially curious mind. At the end of every single day, Jim opens a spreadsheet with 3 columns and logs the following:1. What he did that day. 2. The number of creative work hours for that particular day (For the past 30 years, he’s clocked more than 1,000 creative work hours for the whole year). 3. A number: either +2, +1, 0, -1, or -2. indicating his overall emotional state for the day (+2 is the highest – aka a really good day).
