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Hey investors & entrepreneurs, here's the good stuff this week:

• International stocks might finally have their moment.
• Illiquid funds often hide more risk than they show.
• Trend following can work, but it hurts.
• Uncertainty beats false confidence.
• Some SEO just isn’t worth the effort.
• Good networking.
• Less email, more money
• Founders have to let go if they want to scale.
• & loads more of the good stuff below.

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For the Investor

🤑 Is International Diversification Finally Working? - Germany might spend over €500 billion on defense and infrastructure, ditching its old austerity game and possibly shifting the EU economy into a higher gear. With U.S. valuations stretched and a weaker dollar on the table, international stocks could finally have a real shot at breaking their losing streak.

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🤑 Mispresenting the Risks of Illiquid Funds - Illiquid funds may make returns look smoother than they really are, hiding risk and juicing performance. A new three-step fix shows way more volatility and market exposure than the old method, especially in real estate and hedge funds.

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🤑 What is Trend Following? A Painful Journey to Smarter Investing - Multi-asset trend following may help during crashes but comes with frequent losses and long stretches of underperformance. It’s hard to stick with, even if it pays off over time.

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🤑 Letter to A Young Investor - Chasing quick answers in investing often backfires. Sitting with uncertainty and living the questions may lead to real insight over time.

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🤑 Is Asset Growth an Appropriate Measure of Investment? - The newer asset pricing models only work well because they use asset growth, but that growth mostly comes from stuff like inventory and accounts receivable, not real investment. Using traditional investment measures, they lose their edge.

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For the Entrepreneur

🤑 4 SEO practices with diminishing returns - Some SEO work hits a point where extra effort brings little return. Focus on what drives real results instead of grinding on low-impact tasks.

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🤑 The art of making authentic connections at networking events - Networking hits different when you’re not just chasing numbers but actually connecting with people.

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🤑 How to Spend Less Time on Email Marketing – And Still Make Money - Email still prints money when done right, but most people waste time doing too much.

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🤑 Founders, before you scale, you’ve got to learn to grieve - Founders who want to scale have to get good at grieving what their business used to be. Letting go of early employees, old strategies, or even parts of your own identity isn’t optional—it’s part of the job.

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🤑 Transforming inventory management into strategic advantage through integrated business planning- Most inventory problems aren’t about tech gaps—they come from strategy and operations being totally out of sync.

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Invest in boring businesses ​ "Boring" businesses? So hot right now. ​ Dry cleaners, HVAC, machine shops, home services. ​ Unlike cash-burning VC darlings, these small businesses actually make money. ​ Killer pricing power, real profits, decades of crushing it. ​ And owners will eventually need an exit. ​ That's when acquisition entrepreneurs come in. ​ Round up capital, buy the business, and breathe new life into it. ​ Investors get those sweet "boring business" returns without doing the day-to-day work. ​ So where do you find these opportunities? ​ Enter CapitalPad - a platform connecting accredited investors directly with SMB acquirers. ​ ​ 👉 CapitalPad.com/invest​ ​

• ​Never Root for a Recession​​ - Market crashes may lower asset prices, but lost earnings and savings often outweigh the benefits.
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• ​What Do People Get Wrong About Money? - Most people confuse money as a goal instead of what it really is - a tool that gives you options and lets you avoid doing things you hate. It’s not a store of value, it’s a medium of exchange.
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• ​The hidden dangers of family offices - Family offices manage trillions with little oversight, making them easy tools for tax breaks, risky bets, and laundering.
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• ​How the Biggest Crypto Heist in History Went Down - North Korean hackers stole $1.5 billion from Bybit by exploiting weak security in free storage software, triggering $10 billion in withdrawals and a 20% Bitcoin drop. The CEO admitted it was avoidable.

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​Mars Inc. (the chocolate story) - Mars is still fully private and now pulls in more revenue than Coca-Cola, thanks to a wildly diverse empire that includes not just M&M’s and Snickers but also pet food, Kind Bars, and Ben’s Original Rice. Family drama, wartime innovation, and an obsessive, often ruthless focus on scale and control, especially by Forrest Mars, whose systems thinking turned Mars into one of America’s largest private companies.

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​Apple | Spotify | Youtube​

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Mars Inc. (the chocolate sto... Dec 16 · Acquired 233:11   ​

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• ​Command A might beat GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 on business and coding tasks and runs on just two GPUs instead of a whole server farm. It could be faster, cheaper, and better at handling long docs, multiple languages, and company-specific data.

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❌ No hype ❌ No BS

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Members, here are some of the threads you may have missed…

• TJ in with a local newsletter business update and the automation tools he's working on.
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• Mohit looking to connect with members buying brick and mortar business in the US using SBA and other types of financing.
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• Travis shares some info on non-US investors being no longer able to participate in SBA-funded acquisitions.​
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• Nigel starts a conversation about where the PE playbook will go over the next few years.​
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• Jason looking to the group for help on a Multi-family property held in a Grantor Trust.​

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Fireside chat recording with Michael Kauffman is available here.​

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Check out The Vault, where you'll find any epic and value bomb post/thread immortalized.

In Snowball...

• Upcoming group calls:
  • Ai Group discussion April 1.​
  • M&A chat coming up April 10.​
  • Wine with Travis coming up March 25.
  • Watch for details on our upcoming FS chats.
• More excellent Fireside chats always in the works - stay tuned.
• Members can access recordings of all our Fireside Chats anytime here.​
• You'll also find investing opportunities for members to take advantage of.

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Join Snowball.

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Disclaimer: Not financial, investing or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly for information, entertainment and education purposes. Nothing in here is investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your professional advisors. Do your own research. There will also be affiliate links in here from time to time because we like free money.

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