This is value investor, Allan Mecham.

He dropped out of college at age 22 to start his fund, Arlington Value.

From 2008-2016, they did a CAGR of 30% over 8.5 years!

And in his fund letters, he shared his best frameworks for investing in companies.

Here's a breakdown of each:

I'm 31 years old.

10 years ago when I was 21, I had less than $1,000 in my bank.

If you told me I would cross my first $1 mil at age 29, I wouldn't believe you.

But it's not all about $$.

Here's the top lessons I've learnt about habits, happiness, life and death:

1. Wake up early

I learnt this 4 years ago after listening to Jocko Willink.

I’m not a morning person. Until now I'm still not.

But I force myself to rise early most days.

Knowing you’ve accomplished more than others by the morning is a good feeling.

It sets you up right.

2. Lift weights

Everyone in a competitive field should engage in some form of intense physical activity.

For me I lift weights 5-6x a week. But it could be any sport.

It teaches you valuable lessons like:

- showing up consistently
- putting in the reps
- pushing past boredom

3. Have dreams

I recall watching Tony Robbins when I was 16 years old, and that left an impression on me.

Seeing him speak and inspire others from stage, that’s what I wanted to do.

It gave my life a new purpose beyond video games...

I told all my friends about it.

Anyone who would listen, I publicly declared it.

Probably annoyed many of them.

Looking back, I'm blessed to have found what I wanted to do at an early age.

It gave me clarity in choosing my career, and where I chose to invest my time.

One thing I'm always most excited about as an investor:

Watching CEO interviews.

Over the years, I’ve watched over 100s of them.

Here’s 25 traits I’ve seen in the very best leaders.

You can swipe these into your own framework to evaluate management teams:

1. They don’t rely on external motivation

Not status or money.

Instead, they seem to be driven an inner fire.

Sometimes it’s to make the world a better place.

Other times, it’s to prove themselves right.

And that's why they can keep going even after they're already rich AF.

2. They're not human

They don't see the world like 99% of us

Whether it’s creating a culture that’s a sports team vs a family...

Or thinking of everything from first principles…

They have a different modus operandi.

This helps them see solutions that 99% of us muggles miss.

3. They enjoy founder-company fit

The great leaders are great because:

They’re in a company that plays to their unique personality.

The stars have to align for a great leader to be made.

The product + business model + personality of the leader must match.

4. They give lots of freedom and autonomy

They know how to unleash the potential in their team

They know how to paint an exciting vision…

And then give their team the space to roam free.

They understand that people flourish when you give them room to explore and experiment.

"The best investments comes from the best businesses"

One of the investors who's made a big impact on me:

@JohnHuber72 of Saber Capital

I spent days pouring thru his articles and interviews in my early days...

Even had a doc with 20 pages of notes!

Here's my top 15 lessons:

1. You don't need original or unique investing ideas

You can simply wait for great businesses to be mispriced.

And then pounce when that happens.

In the meanwhile, don't dilute your portfolio with simply "good ideas"

Only accept the "great" ones

2. John's investing criteria for idiots

• Easy to understand businesses

• Generate lots of FCF

• Partner with good management teams

And then...

Sit back and WAIT for the fat pitch

3. Distaste for strikeouts > Desire for homeruns

John is okay with not making 10x returns in a short time.

And he has come to accept that.

Every investment strategy comes with its own features.

The key is knowing what they are and making sure it fits your personality.

4. One years results don't mean much

This was taken from John's 2016 letter...

1 year results can be random.

Don't feel too sad if you underperform...

Or get too confident when you outperform.

Zoom out and look at your performance over multi year periods instead.

1/ A lot of people ask me how Bleacher Report found our first writers when we were tiny and had no funding.

So here's a thread on all the things we tried, what worked best, and lessons on growing a community from scratch:

2/ When we first started B/R, all the articles were written by my co-founders, our friends, and me.

This led to some hilariously bad takes. Like this article where I panned the SF Giants for drafting future World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner.

3/ When we were ready to start building our community, we started with word of mouth. We drafted an email pitching our concept. It went out to everyone we knew, asking them to share it with anyone who would be interested.

This got us maybe a few dozen signups.

From the email:

4/ With only a handful of members, we needed to make the community feel more active.

So we faked it til we made it.

Our team created multiple accounts and posted using different fake names. This created the sense of more activity and encouraged new members to join in.

5/ Later, I learned that the founders of Reddit did the same thing early on.

Sometimes the solution to the "chicken and the egg" problem of building community is to create the illusion of more chickens (or

I sense a few double standards present in the debate over Bidens’ historic Child Tax Credit proposal that would cut the child poverty rate by more than 40%.

My focus here is on a perhaps less obvious one but I think relevant: trust fund kids & the tax treatment of inheritances

Since the mid-1990s, as I’ll walk through, reducing the taxation of large inheritances has been a top, if not the top, tax policy priority of conservatives and Republicans.

In parallel, as I’ll also walk through, there has been a steady stream of research concluding that large inheritances reduce the work effort of wealthy heirs

Unless I’ve missed it, I’ve not sensed the type of concern about the work effects on wealthy heirs among conservative proponents of large tax-free inheritances, which we now see among some conservatives and Republican lawmakers around poor people and a larger Child Tax Credit

In 1997, as part of an agreement with Clinton, who secured wins to make health care more affordable for poor children and college tax credits, Gingrich won “reductions in capital gains and estate taxes that had been principal goals for the GOP.”

1/ There are a ton of books about Financial & Fundamental Analysis, Scuttlebutt and Technical Analysis. But there aren't many books 'taking risk'.

Among the few that exist, 'Zurich Axioms', written in 1985, is the best. Here are my key takeaways from the book.

2/ A bit about Max Gunther's (The Author) background. He was an Anglo-American journalist and writer, who wrote 26 Books.

His father, Franz Heinrich, was the New York Head of Schweizerischer Bankverein, which later merged into the famous Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS).

3/ The 'Zurich Axioms' were a set of unwritten rules followed by a informal group of Swiss Bankers and Traders who used to socialize around Wall Street after World War II. Mr. Heinrich was one of the founding members.

Max Gunter formalied these 'Axioms' by writing about them.

4/ There are 12 'Major Axioms' and 16 'Minor Axioms' (Corollary to the Major Axioms) in the book.

But remember, this is MY key takeaways from the book and not an exact summary. So you might find quotes, phrases and links inserted here and there by me (Not from the Author).

5/ Axiom #1: In order to earn returns, you must take risk. Risk will make you worry.

Risk-taking and worrying go hand-in-hand. If you're not worried about an investment, you're not taking risk.

Spend half your energy towards earning an income and the rest towards speculation.