Welcome to Common Shares
An intro...
Welcome to Common Shares!
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” – Marcus Aurelius
For years, I’ve had this thing sitting in the back of my mind: you need to build a blog or something, Chris. Share investment ideas, views on businesses, and maybe even some worldly wisdom. Discuss long-term views on what’s going on in different industries and the world at large. Maybe even share financial literacy and step in where the school system never did for you. Tell stories. Create something authentic, interesting, and fun. Friends have also encouraged me to do this after reading my investment research and other content over time. I haven’t been able to let this go.
Given how technology and information/media consumption have changed, this is far easier than it’s ever been. Maybe I’m a bit late to the game, but we’re going to take advantage, regardless.
With the personal stuff now aside, welcome to Common Shares!
We’ll be focused on the following, in business-bullet-list form of course:
What I hope you consider “thought leadership” on investing, finance, and different businesses.
Deep dives into investments, mostly what we own or follow. We’ll focus on equities (stocks).
Insights on the goings-on in different industries, with a view to the long term. Things don’t change much week-to-week or quarter-to-quarter; the real insights are multi-year in nature.
Financial literacy and behavioral finance that I hope helps you improve your relationship with money and saving, and with volatility (the big, scary wiggles on charts).
A hodgepodge of related things, like quips on the strange things that happen when you mix people and money together, or what a highly concentrated portfolio looks like in practice.
I think you’d benefit from Common Shares if you’re:
A money manager – whether you’re an investment advisor, you manage your own money, or you’re an institutional portfolio manager or analyst as part of a family office, mutual fund, insurer, etc.
An executive or money-savvy professional looking to take in some high-quality views.
A business owner who similarly wants high quality, practical, long-term information and insights from the perspective of an investor who’s researched many businesses across industries.
Anyone who wants to learn about stocks as businesses, build a healthier relationship with money and investing, and gain some business acumen at the same time. We deal with money and businesses every day. It’s inescapable. Why not build some money muscle?
Long-term oriented – there’s a firehose of “daily blasts”, news, and other info you can put your face in front of, if that’s your thing. I read the news, and you probably should too, but here we’re going to be focused durable ideas – things that don’t fade, or that play out over years. Things that change slower than grass grows.
If you’re none of these, and you merely clicked subscribe to see what happens, welcome aboard, too!
Who is this guy? Why even join me on this ride?
I’ve been a public equities investor (a “stock picker person”, in English) for over a decade, for my family and for clients of the firms I’ve been a part of. I’m not a finance or consulting “helper”, but a practitioner who puts real dollars behind decisions, bears risk, and lives by the consequences: my family’s net worth is invested in a portfolio I run. Lots of people have theories, opinions, etc. about interest rates, the market, or some stock. We have a process, we make decisions, and we act. “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what’s in your portfolio”, as some might say.
I also have the good fortune to have a professional and personal network full of intelligent, ethical, and hardworking people, from engineers to bankers to consultants to investors to entrepreneurs to junior and senior corporate managers, executives, and CEOs. From them, and from my own work, I’ve accumulated frameworks for investing. I’d like to think I’ve got an inventory of financial, business, and management knowledge, not to mention insights about people and behavior we’ve picked up along the way. I want to pull back the curtains on it all and share it in an engaging, informative, and valuable way. With some luck and a bribe or two, we might even be able to pull people I know into the spotlight and make them talk about their fields or their businesses.
Finally, I’ve got some self-interest in doing this because writing and talking help me think out loud. Teaching also helps me learn. One of my goals is for both you and I to become better investors, decision-makers, and businesspersons at the same time.
Let’s dig in, and I hope you find a lot of value in listening to this value investor’s curated content!
Chris