- Five to Thrive
- Posts
- #145 – Magic & Mining
Good morning everyone,
Hope you’re having a great week!
Here are 5 things I found interesting over the past few days.
Let’s jump in.
read online on my website
read time 3 minutes
#145 – The Rundown:
Quote: How to decide what to work on.
Podcast: Game of Life with Lucas Kogaki.
Article: Why invest in mining companies.
Video: The 6 traits of “cool” people.
Tweet: The best proxy for industrial capacity.
Quote:
“Work hard on what comes easily.”
James Clear
A question I often ruminate on:
Am I uniquely positioned to win the game that I’m playing?
Podcast:
Game of Life #302 with Lucas Kogaki
Lucas Kogaki is one of the most exciting young magicians in Australia.
Born and bred in Melbourne to Greek parents, Lucas first began performing magic in his school yard at the age of 14.
After dropping out of university only a few weeks into his sports exercise degree to pursue magic, his career as a magician has absolutely rocketed.
He has amassed an impressively large and engaged following on social media where he showcases some of his most memorable audience reactions, and is now one of the most highly sought after event entertainers in Melbourne – at the age of just 23.
Some of the most interesting aspects of the conversation for me were:
Managing the fear of failure vs self-belief
Giving people a lasting sense of wonder
Staying original in an age-old industry
Losing one’s sense of self in the midst of their obsessions
The power of business cards
The entrepreneurial side of being a magician
As someone who loves magic and has been following Lucas’ journey for years, this was an awesome BTS look into a bloke my age who is doing what he loves – and doing it really bloody well.
Very inspiring.
The host of the pod, Daniel Swain, also managed this interview incredibly well.
Found myself saying “great question” in my head on numerous occasions while listening.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
[Duration: 57 minutes]
(P.S. I made a Spotify playlist with every podcast I’ve ever recommended. Hope they bring you as much value as they’ve brought me.)
Why Invest In Mining Companies
Came across a fantastic article/white paper this week by the Investment Research Team at Kopernik Global Investors on the attractiveness of investing in mining companies.
The article was written in October 2024 so some of the insights are arguably outdated (given how much the Materials & Energy sector has run since then), but it is incredible to see how well their original thesis from ~18 months ago has played out…
For context, Kopernik is a global equity specialist focused on bottom-up, fundamental analysis of businesses with US$9.2b of assets under management, based in Tampa, Florida.
These were some of my biggest takeaways:
1) Mining is traditionally unpopular for valid reasons. Management tend to allocate capital pro-cyclically and grapple with an operationally difficult business model.
2) The question is not “should we own this?” but “at what price is owning this worthwhile?”
3) The DCF (discounted cash flow) approach to valuing mining companies is skewed away from long-term producers/resource holders.
4) When the DCF model is applied to a real asset, investors have essentially “flipped it upside down,” implying that commodities will lose value relative to dollars over time. Thousands of years of history suggest that the reverse is true: fiat currency loses value relative to real assets.
5) Find companies that are under-valued at incentive price (the price at which one estimates it is economical to bring new incremental production of a given commodity online), thereby receiving a “free” option on the probability that the upside scenarios actualise.
6) It is extremely important to diversify across many different management teams, governments, currencies, geologies, geographies, chemistries, and companies.
7) Physical holdings and/or ETFs or similar structures make a lot of sense. However, ownership of publicly traded owners/producers of resources offer a lot of potential.
Check out the full article here.
Video:
The 6 Traits of “Cool” People (According to Psychology)
A study of more than 5,000 people in 12 countries asked participants to evaluate non-famous people that they considered “cool” or “not cool” and rate them on 15 values and personality traits (extroversion, autonomy, warmth, conscientiousness, etc).
Across the 12 countries, the definition or conception of “cool” was markedly similar.
TLDR – cool people are:
1) Outgoing and sociable (extroverted)
2) Pleasure- and enjoyment-seeking (hedonistic)
3) Risk-takers and try new things (adventurous)
4) Curious and open to new experiences (open)
5) Influential/charismatic (powerful)
6) Willing to do things their own way (autonomous)
Fascinating.
What would you add to (or subtract from) that list?
Tweet:
The Best Proxy for Industrial Capacity
Thanks for reading! Grateful for your support.
Stay hungry, stay humble, stay curious. ⚡
If you enjoyed this newsletter, it would mean the world if you could forward it to a friend or send them my website.
This goes a long way to helping me reach more people :)
See you in the next one,
Dimi