Fiddler on the Roof and Value Investing - Ep 292
The Intellectual Investor
It was 2006, my fifth year teaching a graduate investment class at the University of Colorado at Denver, and I had stopped preparing for lectures. One day I opened the syllabus and found discounted cash flow analysis on the menu. I started with: "Imagine you are a farmer about to buy a cow. How much would you pay for that cow?" A few days later, on a Saturday morning, I was sitting in my basement working on the valuation chapter of my first book, Active Value Investing. I was stuck. Valuation can be a very dry and boring topic. After staring at a blank screen for hours, I started listening to...
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What to Do When a Stock Drops 25% - Ep 291
The Intellectual Investor
A client emails me: stock XYZ has declined 25%, is the thesis broken? It's a fair question, and the honest answer is one I want to walk through carefully, because the same client letter brought a second question wearing different clothes: how do you tell the difference between patience and stubbornness when a position isn't working? Both questions get at something I think about constantly: how to hold a position through doubt without either flinching at noise or hardening into ego. Daily liquidity in the stock market is both a feature and a bug, and most of the job of being a long-term...
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Greg Abel Takes Over Berkshire Hathaway: My Thoughts After Omaha 2026 - Ep 290
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: Adam Anderson's interview - AI-generated summary: The Intellectual Investor Breakfast 2027 signup form: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
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What the Iran War Reveals About the Dollar, Gold, and the End of US Exceptionalism - Ep 289
The Intellectual Investor
The US dollar accounts for 58% of foreign currency reserves today, down from 70% two decades ago. The US government's freezing of roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank reserves turned the dollar into a political weapon and undermined the comfort countries (even adversaries) had in it. Central banks are now accumulating gold as if preparing for an Indian wedding. The Iran war, an unraveling of post-WWII alliances, and a US borrowing 6% more than it earns are all reacting to the same underlying shift: the assumptions behind US exceptionalism are quietly being rewritten. I walk through...
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Q&A Series: On Firing Clients, Sizing Positions, and Ignoring Book Value - Ep 288
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
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Q&A: The Antifragile Investor: Balancing Geopolitics, Identity, and the Cost of Growth - Episode 287
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
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Uber and Self-Driving Cars: The Utilization Problem Nobody Talks About - Ep 286
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
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What AI, Tariffs, and Global Uncertainty Mean for Your Portfolio - Ep 285
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
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When to sell a stock: The Art and Psychology of Selling - Ep 284
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: Register for Sunday Breakfast: Check out my Omaha weekend guide: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
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On AI Eating The World - Ep 283
The Intellectual Investor
📩 Join 100,000+ readers on my FREE weekly email newsletter: 📚 Get my books: Soul in the Game - The Little Book of Sideways Markets - Active Value Investing - WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates () in 2012. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." He's written for publications including Financial Times, Barron's, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy.
info_outlineIt was 2006, my fifth year teaching a graduate investment class at the University of Colorado at Denver, and I had stopped preparing for lectures. One day I opened the syllabus and found discounted cash flow analysis on the menu. I started with: "Imagine you are a farmer about to buy a cow. How much would you pay for that cow?"
A few days later, on a Saturday morning, I was sitting in my basement working on the valuation chapter of my first book, Active Value Investing. I was stuck. Valuation can be a very dry and boring topic. After staring at a blank screen for hours, I started listening to Barbra Streisand's "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" from Yentl on YouTube. An hour later I was deep into Fiddler on the Roof, listening to "If I Were a Rich Man."
And then something happened.
I walk through how my subconscious melded Tevye with that cow lecture, and how I ended up writing a chapter about a Jewish farmer buying a cow named Golde, smack in the middle of a finance book filled with seventy-five charts and tables. It became my favorite chapter by a mile.
From there I get into what almost two decades of writing have taught me: why I show up for an hour or two every morning without word-count goals, why the subconscious is where the magic happens, why storytelling beats sterile facts, and why Steve Jobs was right that you can only connect the dots looking backward. Also, a quiet tribute to my Eastern European ancestors, who were not so different from Tevye.
The full essay is at investor.fm.
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🔗 LINKS MENTIONED:
Barbra Streisand's "Papa, Can You Hear Me?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwCPAo5e_F8
Tevye was a Rich Man chapter
https://investor.fm/tevye-was-a-rich-man/
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The Little Book of Sideways Markets - https://amzn.to/3QWTlqZ Active Value Investing - https://amzn.to/3u8zn3A
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WHO AM I: Vitaliy Katsenelson is the CEO of Investment Management Associates (IMA) and an award-winning writer. Forbes Magazine called him "The New Benjamin Graham." His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Fortune, Institutional Investor, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of three books, including Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life. _________________________________________________________
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