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Chris Hohn describing how most investors dramatically underestimate how competition erodes profits over time. They often miss this because they fail to grasp market complexity and focus on too short of a time horizon. Unless the business has an extremely rare, insurmountable moat, management and execution is critical.

CapexAndChill

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21,730 views • 1 month ago •via X (Twitter)

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Chris Hohn: "Most industries are bad industries. Maybe there are 200 companies that we consider to be high-quality and investable." "The one important thing that I've learned in my time in investing is [that] investors underestimate the forces of competition and disruption."

Chris Hohn: "Most industries are bad industries. Maybe there are 200 companies that we consider to be high-quality and investable." "The one important thing that I've learned in my time in investing is [that] investors underestimate the forces of competition and disruption."

Kevin Carpenter

46,935 views • 2 months ago

$MELI management always shares so much value. I hope Leandro does more of these interviews and shout out to Couch Investor🛋️ for making this one. Here are some key insights that most investors are unaware of for $MELI from this interview. Two metrics prove how early Mercado Libre actually is in its growth cycle despite its $86B valuation. Leandro admitted they are only at 1% to 2% of their ultimate goal in using AI to connect Mercado Pago and Mercado Libre data for hyper-personalized consumer experiences. We can potentially see new verticals spin up over the next few years just in this domain alone. Even with their aggressively growing $15B credit book, they are still only the 6th largest credit card issuer in Brazil. The 5th largest competitor is still three times their size! This confirms they have an immense amount of runway left before they hit a market share ceiling. Wall Street models focus heavily on existing market growth, but Mercado Libre has a massive, unactivated pipeline within its current footprint. They only recently launched credit cards in Argentina in August, and the product is not even available in major markets like Chile or Colombia yet. Beyond their current active zones, there is a combined population of ~130M people in secondary Latin American countries where Mercado Libre currently has very little presence. This represents an untapped market the exact size of a "second Mexico" that is entirely ready for future ecosystem expansion. There is not a single analyst pricing this in. Management is highly skeptical of corporate acquisitions. Leandro noted that mergers and acquisitions fail to create value half of the time, so their default strategy is to build their technology and networks in-house. They will only buy an external company if there is a severe "strategic urgency." For example, they acquired a Brazilian network of local mom-and-pop shops purely to establish instant drop-off points for apparel returns, which saved them years of organic development time. Otherwise, they do not rely on buyouts for growth. In Latin America, roughly half of the economy is informal. This means citizens do not have traditional payroll stubs, making it very difficult for standard banks to accurately assess their risk. Mercado Libre’s competitive alpha is that they do not underwrite random people. Instead, they issue credit exclusively based on proprietary behavioral data gathered from within their own closed-loop marketplace. Because they can see exactly how a user buys and sells on the platform, they have a level of granular insight into the real economy that traditional financial institutions cannot match.

$MELI management always shares so much value. I hope Leandro does more of these interviews and shout out to Couch Investor🛋️ for making this one. Here are some key insights that most investors are unaware of for $MELI from this interview. Two metrics prove how early Mercado Libre actually is in its growth cycle despite its $86B valuation. Leandro admitted they are only at 1% to 2% of their ultimate goal in using AI to connect Mercado Pago and Mercado Libre data for hyper-personalized consumer experiences. We can potentially see new verticals spin up over the next few years just in this domain alone. Even with their aggressively growing $15B credit book, they are still only the 6th largest credit card issuer in Brazil. The 5th largest competitor is still three times their size! This confirms they have an immense amount of runway left before they hit a market share ceiling. Wall Street models focus heavily on existing market growth, but Mercado Libre has a massive, unactivated pipeline within its current footprint. They only recently launched credit cards in Argentina in August, and the product is not even available in major markets like Chile or Colombia yet. Beyond their current active zones, there is a combined population of ~130M people in secondary Latin American countries where Mercado Libre currently has very little presence. This represents an untapped market the exact size of a "second Mexico" that is entirely ready for future ecosystem expansion. There is not a single analyst pricing this in. Management is highly skeptical of corporate acquisitions. Leandro noted that mergers and acquisitions fail to create value half of the time, so their default strategy is to build their technology and networks in-house. They will only buy an external company if there is a severe "strategic urgency." For example, they acquired a Brazilian network of local mom-and-pop shops purely to establish instant drop-off points for apparel returns, which saved them years of organic development time. Otherwise, they do not rely on buyouts for growth. In Latin America, roughly half of the economy is informal. This means citizens do not have traditional payroll stubs, making it very difficult for standard banks to accurately assess their risk. Mercado Libre’s competitive alpha is that they do not underwrite random people. Instead, they issue credit exclusively based on proprietary behavioral data gathered from within their own closed-loop marketplace. Because they can see exactly how a user buys and sells on the platform, they have a level of granular insight into the real economy that traditional financial institutions cannot match.

CapexAndChill

15,782 views • 2 months ago

Hohn’s strategy essentially redefines quality as extreme resilience against substitution and competition over a multi-decade timeline. Hohn targets super-companies where physical, non-replicable assets create monopolistic barriers to entry, rendering executive talent largely irrelevant to the underlying cash flows. He deliberately avoids high-growth sectors vulnerable to disruption, viewing terminal value as the greatest source of alpha missed by short-term analysts. For instance, in infrastructure, he targets assets like cell towers, rail lines, and literal toll roads where tenancy ratios allow for near-100% margin expansion on zero-cost additions, and cash flow yields are contractually linked to inflation. In aerospace, his conviction is absolute. TCI's largest holding is $GE Aerospace. Hohn categorizes this as an unbreakable moat because the complexity of building aircraft engines has prevented any new market entrants in over 50 years. The true economic value, however, is not the engine itself, but the captive aftermarket spare parts and servicing ecosystem. Once an airline adopts an engine, the switching costs are effectively insurmountable, guaranteeing decades of highly predictable, high-margin revenue. Hohn’s view on moats is dynamic. He believes even the strongest moats can erode. In a definitive move in early 2026, TCI slashed a large portion of its $8B stake in $MSFT, which is a position held for nearly a decade. Hohn explicitly cited that the rapid advancement of Generative AI posed an existential risk to Microsoft's core Office and Azure moats, proving that he will mercilessly abandon a historically 'high quality' asset the moment technological disruption threatens its terminal value.

Hohn’s strategy essentially redefines quality as extreme resilience against substitution and competition over a multi-decade timeline. Hohn targets super-companies where physical, non-replicable assets create monopolistic barriers to entry, rendering executive talent largely irrelevant to the underlying cash flows. He deliberately avoids high-growth sectors vulnerable to disruption, viewing terminal value as the greatest source of alpha missed by short-term analysts. For instance, in infrastructure, he targets assets like cell towers, rail lines, and literal toll roads where tenancy ratios allow for near-100% margin expansion on zero-cost additions, and cash flow yields are contractually linked to inflation. In aerospace, his conviction is absolute. TCI's largest holding is $GE Aerospace. Hohn categorizes this as an unbreakable moat because the complexity of building aircraft engines has prevented any new market entrants in over 50 years. The true economic value, however, is not the engine itself, but the captive aftermarket spare parts and servicing ecosystem. Once an airline adopts an engine, the switching costs are effectively insurmountable, guaranteeing decades of highly predictable, high-margin revenue. Hohn’s view on moats is dynamic. He believes even the strongest moats can erode. In a definitive move in early 2026, TCI slashed a large portion of its $8B stake in $MSFT, which is a position held for nearly a decade. Hohn explicitly cited that the rapid advancement of Generative AI posed an existential risk to Microsoft's core Office and Azure moats, proving that he will mercilessly abandon a historically 'high quality' asset the moment technological disruption threatens its terminal value.

CapexAndChill

27,269 views • 3 months ago

One of the main points retail investors miss can be summed up by this clip of Berkshire's Greg Abel. Berkshire Hathaway builds its stock-picking philosophy around long-term survival rather than quick profits. When evaluating a company, they ignore standard discussions about immediate financial gains. Instead, they look closely at terminal risk to identify exactly what could destroy the business. They apply a strict ten-year rule to measure this risk. They must be able to clearly picture the company's economic health a full decade into the future. If that future is uncertain, they conclude the investment has no margin of safety and they pass on it entirely. To find the best investments, they focus directly on the single biggest threat facing the company, just as they focused only on the threat of rooftop solar when evaluating NV Energy. A business must prove it can survive its worst operational threat to earn their investment. $BRK.A $BRK.B

One of the main points retail investors miss can be summed up by this clip of Berkshire's Greg Abel. Berkshire Hathaway builds its stock-picking philosophy around long-term survival rather than quick profits. When evaluating a company, they ignore standard discussions about immediate financial gains. Instead, they look closely at terminal risk to identify exactly what could destroy the business. They apply a strict ten-year rule to measure this risk. They must be able to clearly picture the company's economic health a full decade into the future. If that future is uncertain, they conclude the investment has no margin of safety and they pass on it entirely. To find the best investments, they focus directly on the single biggest threat facing the company, just as they focused only on the threat of rooftop solar when evaluating NV Energy. A business must prove it can survive its worst operational threat to earn their investment. $BRK.A $BRK.B

CapexAndChill

74,220 views • 4 months ago

UPCOMING VIDEO Egon believes most investors are focused on how much they can make, when the more important question is: How much could they lose? In his new video, he'll discuss: * Why the final stages of a monetary era happen much faster * What the last 1–3% decline in paper currencies could mean for investors * What investors often miss when they focus only on gold's price

UPCOMING VIDEO Egon believes most investors are focused on how much they can make, when the more important question is: How much could they lose? In his new video, he'll discuss: * Why the final stages of a monetary era happen much faster * What the last 1–3% decline in paper currencies could mean for investors * What investors often miss when they focus only on gold's price

Egon von Greyerz

11,395 views • 2 months ago

Free market capitalists talk about how great competition is...until it’s time for competition. MasterCard and Visa have profit margins of over 50% each and control 80% of the credit card market, yet they are lobbying the government to stop competitors from entering the industry.

Free market capitalists talk about how great competition is...until it’s time for competition. MasterCard and Visa have profit margins of over 50% each and control 80% of the credit card market, yet they are lobbying the government to stop competitors from entering the industry.

Sizwe SikaMusi

16,480 views • 1 year ago

Most traders don’t fail because they never find a strategy. They fail because they never stop searching. At the start everything looks like the answer. Indicators. Tools. New systems. So they keep adding more. Eventually something starts to work. And that is where most people stop. But traders who last do the opposite. They remove what’s unnecessary. They simplify. They focus on what actually moves prices. Over time, complexity disappears. Not because the market got easier but because their understanding got clearer. It was never about more indicators. It was about clarity. If your system keeps getting more complex you are probably not improving it. You are avoiding simplicity.

Most traders don’t fail because they never find a strategy. They fail because they never stop searching. At the start everything looks like the answer. Indicators. Tools. New systems. So they keep adding more. Eventually something starts to work. And that is where most people stop. But traders who last do the opposite. They remove what’s unnecessary. They simplify. They focus on what actually moves prices. Over time, complexity disappears. Not because the market got easier but because their understanding got clearer. It was never about more indicators. It was about clarity. If your system keeps getting more complex you are probably not improving it. You are avoiding simplicity.

Riz Iqbal

10,840 views • 4 months ago

$HEI has been one of the best compounders of the last 3 decades. A $10K investment in 1990 is worth over $8M today. Listened to this interview with Co-President Eric Mendelson and its pretty clear why this has been such a strong business. The business model is very simple but extremely difficult to replicate. In 1990, HEICO was a struggling business with a ~$25M market cap. Management discovered a regulatory loophole to challenge aerospace OEMs. They used FAA regulation to engineer replacement aerospace parts. They proved to the FAA that their parts strictly matched the fit, form, and function of OEM parts. This broke the OEM pricing monopolies. They have shipped 85M parts with zero in-flight failures. The capital allocation strategy is the secret sauce behind the stock. The Mendelson family runs the company, but they refuse to operate it like a traditional family business. Larry, Eric, and Victor Mendelson require a unanimous three-way vote for any major decision. If one says no, the deal dies instantly. This strict filter kills bad capital deployment. They have acquired 100 companies over the years. 98 of those acquisitions have been successful. They focus exclusively on businesses generating 20% or higher margins. They also run the balance sheet with extreme discipline. They try to target roughly a 1x debt-to-EBITDA ratio. This protects the equity from macroeconomic debt cycles. HEICO operates like a highly decentralized portfolio. It does not run like a typical billion dollar aerospace behemoth. It runs as roughly 140 separate businesses. Each unit makes unde $100M and employs arround less than 100 people. Corporate buys companies led by great operators and leaves them completely alone. They do not force typical corporate integration or micromanagement. They also build extreme employee loyalty. Their recent M&A execution proves the decentralized model scales very well. In August 2023, HEICO acquired Wencor for just over $2.05B from private equity firm. They paid almost 13x EBITDA. This was the highest multiple they ever paid for an asset. However, Wencor has outperformed expectations so aggressively that the effective multiple is now in the single digits. Management also eliminates geopolitical risk. They refuse to manufacture anything in China. They actively protect their intellectual property from theft. Mendelson noted that China is at least 20 years away from matching western commercial aircraft technology, and engine technology parity will not happen in his lifetime.

$HEI has been one of the best compounders of the last 3 decades. A $10K investment in 1990 is worth over $8M today. Listened to this interview with Co-President Eric Mendelson and its pretty clear why this has been such a strong business. The business model is very simple but extremely difficult to replicate. In 1990, HEICO was a struggling business with a ~$25M market cap. Management discovered a regulatory loophole to challenge aerospace OEMs. They used FAA regulation to engineer replacement aerospace parts. They proved to the FAA that their parts strictly matched the fit, form, and function of OEM parts. This broke the OEM pricing monopolies. They have shipped 85M parts with zero in-flight failures. The capital allocation strategy is the secret sauce behind the stock. The Mendelson family runs the company, but they refuse to operate it like a traditional family business. Larry, Eric, and Victor Mendelson require a unanimous three-way vote for any major decision. If one says no, the deal dies instantly. This strict filter kills bad capital deployment. They have acquired 100 companies over the years. 98 of those acquisitions have been successful. They focus exclusively on businesses generating 20% or higher margins. They also run the balance sheet with extreme discipline. They try to target roughly a 1x debt-to-EBITDA ratio. This protects the equity from macroeconomic debt cycles. HEICO operates like a highly decentralized portfolio. It does not run like a typical billion dollar aerospace behemoth. It runs as roughly 140 separate businesses. Each unit makes unde $100M and employs arround less than 100 people. Corporate buys companies led by great operators and leaves them completely alone. They do not force typical corporate integration or micromanagement. They also build extreme employee loyalty. Their recent M&A execution proves the decentralized model scales very well. In August 2023, HEICO acquired Wencor for just over $2.05B from private equity firm. They paid almost 13x EBITDA. This was the highest multiple they ever paid for an asset. However, Wencor has outperformed expectations so aggressively that the effective multiple is now in the single digits. Management also eliminates geopolitical risk. They refuse to manufacture anything in China. They actively protect their intellectual property from theft. Mendelson noted that China is at least 20 years away from matching western commercial aircraft technology, and engine technology parity will not happen in his lifetime.

CapexAndChill

19,006 views • 4 months ago

There is a massive misunderstanding about what $APP actually is, and the recent Adam Foroughi interview just handed investors as a class in capital allocation, efficiency, and strategic vertical integration. At its core, AppLovin isn’t solely an ad-network or a gaming business but an arbitrage engine. APP is essentially run by a skeleton crew of about ~400 core engineers and product builders generating $1.3B in cash flow a quarter. The gaming studio acquisitions were purely strategic. From roughly 2018 to 2023, APP bought up mobile gaming studios. It was accumulating over 15 studios and 1,500 headcount. This was not because they wanted to be a gaming company, but strictly to harvest first-party conversion data. They needed proprietary behavioral and return on ad spend data to train their Axon deep learning models because third-party advertisers wouldn't share it. Once the Axon 2.0 model launched in April 2023, it became so hyper-effective that the entire gaming industry had no choice but to plug in and share their data to access the platform's unparalleled returns. Having served its purpose, APP then shed the distraction, selling off the gaming portfolio to Tripledot Studios. This was pure strategic rent extraction. They used the asset to train the AI, built the moat, and immediately dumped the asset. Then there is the capital allocation execution. Back in 2022, when the broader market abandoned the stock and pushed APP's market cap to a floor of $3.8B, the business was still printing over $1 B in EBITDA. Instead of executing standard open-market share repurchases, management identified that their private equity backers and early insiders held nearly 50% of the float and eventually wanted liquidity. Management bypassed the public market entirely. They negotiated directly with those institutional holders to execute a massive $6 billion leveraged buyback. They effectively retired a huge portion of the company at rock-bottom valuations. Foroughi noted this singular move generated $50 to $60 B in retained value for remaining shareholders as the stock rebounded. While the rest of big tech hoards headcount, APP actively fired 40% of its workforce in recent years while growing revenue by nearly 100% YoY. The C-suite consists only of the CEO, CFO, CTO, and General Counsel. There is no CRO, no COO, and virtually no salesforce. They replaced standard enterprise bloat with LLMs. Over 80% of their codebase is now written by AI, multiplying the output of their highest-tier engineers up to 100x. The product nearly sells itself. Advertisers plug in, set a performance goal, and if the ROAS is positive, they scale spend infinitely. It turns advertisers into blind arbitrageurs. The TAM expansion is also clear. Now that the model has perfected gaming monetization, APP is unleashing Axon onto e-commerce and local SMBs. They don't need a massive sales team to do this. The AI matches the right intent with the right ad, pushing conversion rates up. The company literally has internal compensation triggers tied to a $1 T market cap. Given they have grown from under $4 B in 2022 to roughly ~$154 B in market cap today, betting against this lean, hyper-competent team does not make much sense.

There is a massive misunderstanding about what $APP actually is, and the recent Adam Foroughi interview just handed investors as a class in capital allocation, efficiency, and strategic vertical integration. At its core, AppLovin isn’t solely an ad-network or a gaming business but an arbitrage engine. APP is essentially run by a skeleton crew of about ~400 core engineers and product builders generating $1.3B in cash flow a quarter. The gaming studio acquisitions were purely strategic. From roughly 2018 to 2023, APP bought up mobile gaming studios. It was accumulating over 15 studios and 1,500 headcount. This was not because they wanted to be a gaming company, but strictly to harvest first-party conversion data. They needed proprietary behavioral and return on ad spend data to train their Axon deep learning models because third-party advertisers wouldn't share it. Once the Axon 2.0 model launched in April 2023, it became so hyper-effective that the entire gaming industry had no choice but to plug in and share their data to access the platform's unparalleled returns. Having served its purpose, APP then shed the distraction, selling off the gaming portfolio to Tripledot Studios. This was pure strategic rent extraction. They used the asset to train the AI, built the moat, and immediately dumped the asset. Then there is the capital allocation execution. Back in 2022, when the broader market abandoned the stock and pushed APP's market cap to a floor of $3.8B, the business was still printing over $1 B in EBITDA. Instead of executing standard open-market share repurchases, management identified that their private equity backers and early insiders held nearly 50% of the float and eventually wanted liquidity. Management bypassed the public market entirely. They negotiated directly with those institutional holders to execute a massive $6 billion leveraged buyback. They effectively retired a huge portion of the company at rock-bottom valuations. Foroughi noted this singular move generated $50 to $60 B in retained value for remaining shareholders as the stock rebounded. While the rest of big tech hoards headcount, APP actively fired 40% of its workforce in recent years while growing revenue by nearly 100% YoY. The C-suite consists only of the CEO, CFO, CTO, and General Counsel. There is no CRO, no COO, and virtually no salesforce. They replaced standard enterprise bloat with LLMs. Over 80% of their codebase is now written by AI, multiplying the output of their highest-tier engineers up to 100x. The product nearly sells itself. Advertisers plug in, set a performance goal, and if the ROAS is positive, they scale spend infinitely. It turns advertisers into blind arbitrageurs. The TAM expansion is also clear. Now that the model has perfected gaming monetization, APP is unleashing Axon onto e-commerce and local SMBs. They don't need a massive sales team to do this. The AI matches the right intent with the right ad, pushing conversion rates up. The company literally has internal compensation triggers tied to a $1 T market cap. Given they have grown from under $4 B in 2022 to roughly ~$154 B in market cap today, betting against this lean, hyper-competent team does not make much sense.

CapexAndChill

24,419 views • 4 months ago

Chris Hohn on what makes a good investor. "I was always willing to look at the company fundamentals and not try to guess the stock market. I was always fundamental." "Most investors are not fundamental. They trade actively. They look at data points. They say, 'What's the catalyst?' They don't really know what the company does." "Long-termism is key."

Chris Hohn on what makes a good investor. "I was always willing to look at the company fundamentals and not try to guess the stock market. I was always fundamental." "Most investors are not fundamental. They trade actively. They look at data points. They say, 'What's the catalyst?' They don't really know what the company does." "Long-termism is key."

Kevin Carpenter

23,506 views • 1 month ago

Toronto Police have a driving problem. They know how to deliver hot coffee to jihadists. They know how to keep Islamist terrorists safe. They tell you to leave your car keys for thieves. But they don't know how to drive an SUV. They ran over a suspect and one of their own officers before because they are unable to drive. This time, they hit a yellow fire hydrant. Incompetence in the Toronto Police is at an all-time high. 🤡🤡🤡

Toronto Police have a driving problem. They know how to deliver hot coffee to jihadists. They know how to keep Islamist terrorists safe. They tell you to leave your car keys for thieves. But they don't know how to drive an SUV. They ran over a suspect and one of their own officers before because they are unable to drive. This time, they hit a yellow fire hydrant. Incompetence in the Toronto Police is at an all-time high. 🤡🤡🤡

Salman Sima

26,982 views • 9 months ago

An Ethiopian national has taken the life of a successful SAn businessman, all because his business was thriving. It seems that when SAn outperform them in business, the response isn’t to compete, but to eliminate the competition altogether. This is how they silence success.

An Ethiopian national has taken the life of a successful SAn businessman, all because his business was thriving. It seems that when SAn outperform them in business, the response isn’t to compete, but to eliminate the competition altogether. This is how they silence success.

Simulation F=G mM/r**2 🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦🇿🇦

100,119 views • 1 year ago

Bill Ackman on a diversified portfolio: "Diversification protects you from ignorance. Right? If you don't know what you're doing just do a lot of things." If your research correctly identifies the fundamental quality and durable cash flows of a business, extreme concentration is the logical way to beat the market. The wealthiest founders build their fortunes on a "portfolio of one". Ackman said for stock pickers, conducting deep business research, holding just 10 to 12 highly predictable companies provides more than adequate risk management. My only caveat is people vastly underestimate the risks of a business and overestimate their true understanding of the business. This is the single biggest issue with high concentration.

Bill Ackman on a diversified portfolio: "Diversification protects you from ignorance. Right? If you don't know what you're doing just do a lot of things." If your research correctly identifies the fundamental quality and durable cash flows of a business, extreme concentration is the logical way to beat the market. The wealthiest founders build their fortunes on a "portfolio of one". Ackman said for stock pickers, conducting deep business research, holding just 10 to 12 highly predictable companies provides more than adequate risk management. My only caveat is people vastly underestimate the risks of a business and overestimate their true understanding of the business. This is the single biggest issue with high concentration.

CapexAndChill

35,300 views • 1 month ago

The next big opportunity they are seizing is tokenization. This is how they will grow from a market of billions, to trillions -- the U.S. alone has over 55 trillion dollars of assets that can be tokenized. What should you be watching that most people will miss?

The next big opportunity they are seizing is tokenization. This is how they will grow from a market of billions, to trillions -- the U.S. alone has over 55 trillion dollars of assets that can be tokenized. What should you be watching that most people will miss?

Austin King

102,725 views • 1 year ago