I bet you change your mind about PDD after watching
Didn't Mark Twain once say "It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So"
My advice is to understand what you are investing in and if you can't, move on. The CEO may have been introduced to Buffett, but Berkshire didn't invest. Buffett has been introduced to many people over the years, but that isn't a reason to invest.
I know Ian Cassel personally. I doubt that he would invest in PDD - not least because Ian is interested in small cap companies that have more chance of doubling in value in 3 years than a business valued in hundreds of billions of dollars. So PDD is a strange example when using Ian's filter selection.
Regarding Buffett, PDD is TECH and pretty much STARTUP/IPO company, so that will be the first 2 reasons I can think of in the first 3 seconds that could not make Buffett's list. And I think (maybe 50% sure) that you may be mistaking yongPing Duan and PDD's former CEO (let's call him Huang just to be short and clear) for a Chinese pump and dump guy that pretty much ended Buffett's will to carry on the charity lunch auction besides his growing age and declining energy and health etc.. Btw. Mr Duan is currently a value investor (a friend of Mohnish as far as I know) managing a value fund, although investing mostly in big caps because of its sheer size. At the time of the lunch, I am not sure of the timeline / age difference, but Huang was either immediately getting out of college or was doing his Google developer job that he also got instead of $MSFT because Mr. Duan told him to work at Google after graduation because of future stock earnings of Google stock options. I think this is somewhat comparable to the time when Michael Jordan was telling Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen to take Nike shares instead of just usd which Barkley gladly took, but not Pippen. I was not disclosing these information, because this may have been a simple weird post, as you can see from the missing commas and dots, that meant to show the filter based on not well picked out examples. My bad really. Nonetheless, just be curious, have you thought of why Mohnish was picking Guy to the lunch? Why didn't Mr. Duan pick his kids, his wife, his students e.g. CEOs at vivo and oppo to the lunch. Or even his friend as CEO of netease who got him acquainted with Huang btw.. So maybe ask some questions to the owner before entering his space before making any harsh/snappy assumptions next time :) Just some kind advice :) But forget them already if you regard them as trash :) As a asian myself, I am familiar with good manners, but substack is different so we are ok. BR Yuqiu
Thanks for the comment, james. I did see the Video (I think 2-3 months ago), so that is not a surprise for me. If they disclose everything in their financial statements. Then, $JD and $BABA would have caught on why $PDD was catching up so fast. Am I happy with the lost transparency. No. Would have been better to disclose everything for $PDD. Yes and no. Would have jeff bezos ($AMZN) wished to not talk about investing into Cloud (vs $MSFT and $GOOG) in his annual letters. I would say yes! All stocks have short sellers and long promoters. What came to your mind that I didn't know anything about PDD ? Did you know that $PDD had "unlawful" non-compete clauses for all of their employees before leaving the company ? Moreover, they even sued a lot of their employees for breaking those rules ? Well I did. But do I care about their "bad" company culture ? Is it important for making the buy/hold decision? I don't think so. That is why value investors make money in different industries of investments. To your second comment, even it is a strange example to apply a micro filter on a big cap, it works sometimes also for small-, mid- or big-caps. Filters are static, but our mind is dynamically built. That is also why the undiscovered filter was rephrased as undiscovered/misunderstood. As large caps are hardly undiscovered anymore with a number of analysts. BR Yuqiu
What do you really know about Pinduoduo PDD?
The truth is not much.
I say this because PDD deliberately don't disclose the kind of information that investors need.
When a company is deliberately opaque, one needs to ask why.
See this fascinating expose/analysis from the Financial Times: https://youtu.be/2d8j_q2tl9c?feature=shared
I bet you change your mind about PDD after watching
Didn't Mark Twain once say "It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So"
My advice is to understand what you are investing in and if you can't, move on. The CEO may have been introduced to Buffett, but Berkshire didn't invest. Buffett has been introduced to many people over the years, but that isn't a reason to invest.
I know Ian Cassel personally. I doubt that he would invest in PDD - not least because Ian is interested in small cap companies that have more chance of doubling in value in 3 years than a business valued in hundreds of billions of dollars. So PDD is a strange example when using Ian's filter selection.
Regarding Buffett, PDD is TECH and pretty much STARTUP/IPO company, so that will be the first 2 reasons I can think of in the first 3 seconds that could not make Buffett's list. And I think (maybe 50% sure) that you may be mistaking yongPing Duan and PDD's former CEO (let's call him Huang just to be short and clear) for a Chinese pump and dump guy that pretty much ended Buffett's will to carry on the charity lunch auction besides his growing age and declining energy and health etc.. Btw. Mr Duan is currently a value investor (a friend of Mohnish as far as I know) managing a value fund, although investing mostly in big caps because of its sheer size. At the time of the lunch, I am not sure of the timeline / age difference, but Huang was either immediately getting out of college or was doing his Google developer job that he also got instead of $MSFT because Mr. Duan told him to work at Google after graduation because of future stock earnings of Google stock options. I think this is somewhat comparable to the time when Michael Jordan was telling Charles Barkley and Scottie Pippen to take Nike shares instead of just usd which Barkley gladly took, but not Pippen. I was not disclosing these information, because this may have been a simple weird post, as you can see from the missing commas and dots, that meant to show the filter based on not well picked out examples. My bad really. Nonetheless, just be curious, have you thought of why Mohnish was picking Guy to the lunch? Why didn't Mr. Duan pick his kids, his wife, his students e.g. CEOs at vivo and oppo to the lunch. Or even his friend as CEO of netease who got him acquainted with Huang btw.. So maybe ask some questions to the owner before entering his space before making any harsh/snappy assumptions next time :) Just some kind advice :) But forget them already if you regard them as trash :) As a asian myself, I am familiar with good manners, but substack is different so we are ok. BR Yuqiu
Thanks for the comment, james. I did see the Video (I think 2-3 months ago), so that is not a surprise for me. If they disclose everything in their financial statements. Then, $JD and $BABA would have caught on why $PDD was catching up so fast. Am I happy with the lost transparency. No. Would have been better to disclose everything for $PDD. Yes and no. Would have jeff bezos ($AMZN) wished to not talk about investing into Cloud (vs $MSFT and $GOOG) in his annual letters. I would say yes! All stocks have short sellers and long promoters. What came to your mind that I didn't know anything about PDD ? Did you know that $PDD had "unlawful" non-compete clauses for all of their employees before leaving the company ? Moreover, they even sued a lot of their employees for breaking those rules ? Well I did. But do I care about their "bad" company culture ? Is it important for making the buy/hold decision? I don't think so. That is why value investors make money in different industries of investments. To your second comment, even it is a strange example to apply a micro filter on a big cap, it works sometimes also for small-, mid- or big-caps. Filters are static, but our mind is dynamically built. That is also why the undiscovered filter was rephrased as undiscovered/misunderstood. As large caps are hardly undiscovered anymore with a number of analysts. BR Yuqiu