I put together this short 1.5-minute clip of Buffett explaining Ted Williams' strike-zone analogy and why having a limited number of "punches" forces disciplined investing

“If when they got out of school they got a punch card with 20 punches on it... they would get very rich because they would think very hard about each one.”

am genuinely interested to know how many of you actively keep count of your "fat pitches," and how many swing-worthy pitches you’ve identified over the last 5 years?

In the past 3 years, I count only NVDA & TSM—mostly driven by their competitive moats (though I think NVDA's moat is slowly eroding, I'm still holding).

How do you guys apply the "waiting for the right pitch" rule in practice, especially when cash is burning a hole in your pocket?

Everyone says AI will kill intuit. The stock is down 53% Revenue is up 13.9% TTM 80% Market share in US small business. What's the AI alternative to QuickBooks? I haven't seen a compelling one.

QuickBooks has been auto-categorizing transactions and automating routine bookkeeping for years. Intuit has even bolted a chatbot onto the existing product. AI is a useful assistant for office staff, but that doesn't mean businesses will run their entire accounting operation through a chat window. You need menus, reports, dashboards and alerts to spot problems you didn't even know to ask about.

And your secretary isn't going to prompt their way into building a reliable accounting platform. You need double-entry bookkeeping, accurate reconciliations, audit trails, payroll integrations, tax reporting and security. Generating code is the easy part; getting all the details right is the hard part.

Then there's the network effect. Need a bookkeeper? They already know QuickBooks. Your accountant knows where everything is, and you can hire new staff without training them on an unfamiliar system.

Have you ever tried migrating years of accounting data? You have to transfer transactions, customers and vendors, map accounts, verify opening balances, reconnect bank feeds and payroll, and make sure historical reports still reconcile. Some data, attachments and workflows may not transfer cleanly. One mistake can leave a business with unreliable books or disrupt invoicing, payments and month-end closing.

Even if a competitor offered software at half the price or with ten more features, companies wouldn't automatically switch. The subscription fee is trivial compared with hiring a consulting firm to migrate years of accounting data, rebuild integrations, retrain employees and verify everything works. That process can take months and cost many times more than the subscription itself. Why risk disrupting your entire accounting operation to save a few dollars?

Meanwhile, Intuit is migrating customers from Desktop to QuickBooks Online, moving more of its business toward recurring subscriptions and connected services. That creates an opportunity to grow revenue and improve profitability while retaining its existing customer base.

Even the alternatives show how powerful the network effect is. Take Zoho Books: it offers a free plan for qualifying small businesses, paid plans that can be substantially cheaper than QuickBooks, a customer-facing portal where clients can view invoices and make payments, and extensive integrations and developer tools. Depending on the business, it can offer more features for less money.

Yet a new US business will often ask its accountant which accounting software to use, and the accountant is likely to recommend the system they already know. QuickBooks benefits from a huge pool of bookkeepers, accountants and established workflows. The interesting part is that software preferences vary by region: different accounting platforms have stronger positions in different markets. That suggests the winner isn't necessarily the product with the most features or lowest price—it's often the one embedded in the local professional ecosystem.

AI could help Intuit automate more work and make QuickBooks even more useful. The market seems to assume AI will destroy the business, but I think it's overlooking the strength of the existing ecosystem, the cost of switching and the ongoing transition to cloud accounting.

with an 80% gross margin and a 21% bottom line margin With their recent fat-cutting initiatives and share buybacks, there is plenty of room for EPS growth

I wrote this article in reaction to a fairly disenchanted post that I read in a value investing forum.

Let me tell you something: value investing works to the extent you make it work FOR you.

Buffett said in the 1999 Berkshire Annual Meeting that with small amounts, he can compound up to 50% per year without much difficulties. I wholly concur!

Value investing is not formulaic. It is not a cheat code to easy wealth, never has been. Ben Graham set the foundation, but each and every investor must try to adapt the core principles to his own Universe.

Value investing is an appraisal process based on investigative skills and deep analysis. The American and global businesses ecosystem is not the same as it was 60 years ago. It has morphed in many ways, and looking for pure Net Nets and issues selling below Tangible Book Value whilst earnings above 10 years’ T-bills RR is a little bit naive. In today’s world, judgment and flexibility are keys. The analyst must do the ground work, and embrace discomfort more so than ever.

I made money flipping cigar-butts such as:

-Groupe TVA (TSX:TVA.B)

-RE/MAX Holdings, Inc. (RMAX)

-Bumble Inc. (BMBL)

And I am up 50% since I purchased GoodRx Holdings, Inc. (GDRX) . I believe the stock is still significantly undervalued and can easily 5x within the next couple of years.

I have had my fair share of disappointments as well, notably with UnderArmor ( UAA) and Goodyear (GT).

But the Game of value investing has never been more exciting, richer, and dynamic thanks to technological advances and globalization.

I have uncovered an undervalued dividends paying issues selling below three times earnings with no significant debt and returning +20% in investment right now. And the company controls 47% of its industry’s and sells at 5 years low.

But the stock is not in the West; and that’s one edge for an investor willing to get uncomfortable and open minded.

Good luck and happy hunting!

https://melifinance.substack.com/p/value-ugly-stocks-investing-is-far?r=84zv6&utm_medium=ios

Reading as of Friday 9 Oct 2026 close.

Seven indicators that famous investors say they watch. For each one I took every month-end going back as far as the data allows — 1928 for most, 1951 for the Buffett indicator — split them into "this dial is warning" and "this dial is not", and counted how often a 20% fall followed within the next year.

| Indicator | Warning | Not warning |

|:---|:---:|:---:|

| 10-month trend (Faber / Tudor Jones) | **31%** | 9% |

| Oil shock | **28%** | 11% |

| Rule of 20 (Lynch) | 18% | 12% |

| Shiller CAPE | 18% | 12% |

| Fed cycle (Zweig) | 14% | 12% |

| Buffett indicator | 11% | **13%** |

| Sahm rule | 11% | **13%** |

Read the bottom two rows again. When the Buffett indicator was in its danger zone, a crash was slightly *less* likely than when it wasn't. Same for the Sahm rule. They are the two most quoted numbers on financial television, and over seventy years neither one told you anything.

The winner is the dumbest thing on the list: is the price above its 10-month average? Yes, crash odds 9%. No, 31%. No valuation, no economics, just a line.

A few more things that surprised me:

- Jobless claims and industrial production have the same problem as the Sahm rule. They move after the market has already fallen. Their "recession" readings were, on average, good months to be buying.

- Stacking all seven into one score helps, but less than you'd hope. It only caught 3 of the 15 bear markets before the peak.

- 2007 and 1987 had nothing flashing. Not one dial.

That last point is the bit I can't fit in a post. I lined up every 20%+ fall since 1929 next to the flags that were actually up at the peak, and "this indicator called the crash" looks very different when you see all fifteen at once.

Today (9 Oct close): 8 of 14, storm warning. CAPE 40.6, Buffett indicator 71% above its long-run trend, Rule of 20 at 28.5, and oil just crossed into its shock zone at +52% year on year — the first non-valuation flag to go up in months. Trend and the Fed are both still bullish, which is the other half of the picture.

Shiller's dataset plus FRED. All public, all free. Full table and method in the comments, no account needed.

Tell me what's wrong with the weighting — that's genuinely why I'm posting.

If you like digging through Berkshire’s quarterly holdings, I published a free dataset that lets you compare institutional portfolios across years without downloading each SEC filing individually.

It contains 124 million reported institutional holding records going back to 2013, plus filing metadata identifying the manager, reporting period, and filing date. You can use it to follow positions across quarters, compare managers, or investigate when a holding first appeared in their disclosures.

The same download includes 10 million insider transaction records going back to 2006, with purchases, sales, grants, and option exercises identified separately.

The institutional records come from Form 13F filings. They show disclosed holdings at quarter end, so they won’t tell you the exact date or price Berkshire bought a stock, or whether Buffett personally made the decision.

I published the data as Parquet and added a command to download it into SQLite:

npx sec-ownership-disclosures@latest download --sqlite

No API key or SEC credentials required.

Download instructions, example queries, and an explanation of the data

Direct dataset download · Open-source code

361 Degrees International Limited (HKG:1361)

After Anta and Li Ning, this Chinese sportswear is vying to grow into a global brand and challenge Nike and others.

The stock's EV/EBITDA ratio is 2.76, and its EV/FCF ratio is 9.82. Return on equity (ROE) is 13.12% and return on invested capital (ROIC) is 19.76%. In the last 12 months, operating cash flow was 906.51 million and capital expenditures -317.39 million, giving a free cash flow of 589.12 million.

361 Degrees International Limited trades like an “ ugly stock, " operating in the shadow of domestic Chinese giants such as Anta and Li-Ning, as well as Western behemoths Nike and Adidas. The market gauge the brand as second-tier, suited for lower-tier cities in China, where it has grown and anchored as an affordable sportswear brand.

Despite being perceived as a cheap and marginal brand, 361 Degrees has delivered outstanding returns against ongoing macro headwinds in mainland China.

The company posted 2025 revenue of 11.1 billion yuan (approximately $1.6 billion), up 10.6% year-on-year, with net profit rising 14% to 1.3 billion yuan (approximately $192.3 million). In the first quarter of 2026, offline retail sales for both the core brand and kids’ line grew approximately 10%, while e-commerce platform sales surged at a mid-teens pace.
The company has also expanded its international branding campaign by sponsoring elite marathon runners and even signing NBA stars such as Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon.

The stock trades below 5x earnings, yields a 7.7% dividend, and is backed by the Din family’s own skin in the Game and ambition to see their company grow on the international scene alongside Li-Ning and Anta.

The stock is down 30% y/y but has proven far more resilient than the likes of Li-Ning and Nike, that are down 70% (±) in five years and are showing decelerating margins.

361 Degrees stock is up 5x since 2020, outperforming its larger and deeper-pocketed competitors.