I’m trying to find a simple explanation between several investment concepts I consider important and I can’t find it. The issue is there are so many conflicting factors for success that it’s difficult to find a common thread. Some of those nuances :

We don’t always need to have a variant view on a company to make money yet finding secrets the rest of the market hasn’t realized yet is very valuable (ex: Carvana in 2018, XPEL for a while, CDON, now).

what’s more valuable: Taleb’s theory of keeping a lot of cash and just deploying into highly asymmetric bets OR being fully invested in companies? And should we be highly diversified into lots of only asymmetric bets or concentrated in just a few asymmetric bets?

How much of an indication of future success are multiples? Sometimes a stock at 20x EBITDA might be fairly valued and sometimes a stock at 20x Sales might be dirt cheap, and the 20x EBITDA biz might be just as good or better (ex: compare Shopify to Visa from 2016-18).

The holy grail is finding stocks which will benefit from both great unit growth and multiple expansion but holding on to that rule too tightly would have meant missing out on SaaS from 2017 till today

we need to find shortcuts (ex: Tegus or sell-side research), but also develop independent opinions

need to entertain all ideas but in the same time say no quickly-how to know? Yes I know mental models, but sometimes the most special ideas are out of the ordinary

Need to think about narratives and sentiments deeply but how much is too much? ex: I get how people bought the Tesla narrative but I didn't (I still don't), and that meant missing out on a lot of gains