That greeting is new, and so is this kind of post. Let me explain both before I get into the substance, because there are three to four things I want to cover today and the last one ends with a favor I would like to ask of you, so I’d appreciate it if you stick around.

Almost everything I publish here is analysis. A company deep dive, an investing framework, updated thoughts on business valuation, a mistake I made.

What follows is none of those.

It is a piece about the process of writing itself, the art of writing, the business of writing, about how it travels, and about a problem I have not solved.

I plan to write more of these. Vitaliy Katsenelson is the model I have in mind. He built his reputation on value investing and then started publishing essays about classical music, chess, Stoicism, and his children, and a good number of his readers arrived for the investing and stayed for the rest. He describes himself as an investor who thinks through writing. That framing appeals to me enormously. I am a teacher and a writer as much as I am an investor, and the parts of me that show up in a Dino Polska deep dive are a narrow slice of the person doing the writing.

So these more personal pieces, or so I intend, are going to appear from time to time, and I will file them under the “NEW? Start Here” tab on the homepage.

1) Why the greeting changed

I sat down with Pieter from the other day to record a podcast (find it here), and somewhere in the prep I noticed that he opens his emails with “Dear Partners.”

I liked what that does. It treats the reader as somebody who is in this with you rather than somebody you are broadcasting at. It makes it more personal.

So I went looking for my own version, and “Dear second-level thinkers” is where I landed. Tell me in the comments what you make of the choice. I am open to better suggestions.

The term comes from Howard Marks. First-level thinking looks at a business, decides it is a good one, and buys the stock. Second-level thinking asks what everybody else already believes about that business, what the price is already paying for, and where the consensus might have it wrong. It is slower, more uncomfortable, yet it is invaluable in investing.

That distinction matters more in 2026 than ever. Information has never been cheaper. More abundant. Anybody can have a competent summary of a 10-K in forty seconds and a serviceable DCF thirty seconds later. The floor of financial analysis has risen enormously. What the machines made abundant is the first level. Critical thinking, leaning into your experience as an investor, intuition, recognizing patterns, an ability to connect the dots – those skills stayed scarce, and the homogenizing pull of AI in research is making them scarcer still.

That is the work I am trying to do here, and that is who I think you are.

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2) Declaring war on the algorithm

A reader wrote to me recently, responding to a Note where I admitted that I struggle to get the word out about this blog.

His reply, translated from the German, was that quality is not my problem. He had asked an AI to rank some investing Substacks so he could learn from the best, I came out near the top, and his conclusion was that marketing is the lever I have not pulled.

I want to be careful here, because leaning on an AI-generated ranking as evidence of my own quality is exactly the kind of first-level move I just spent a few paragraphs criticizing. Treat it as one reader’s opinion, which is what it is. Quality is also in the eye of the beholder; I realize that.

The “weak marketing” diagnosis rings true all the same, and I have been chewing on it for weeks.

Here is a chart I came across today – the “substack finance” search term is absolutely booming on Google Search.

Interest in the category is more than holding up fine. What is strange is how badly that lines up with what I hear from other writers in the stock research niche, most of whom describe the last several months as a grind. Tough. Many see a decline in their paying subscriber base.

A fantastic recent article by , who analyzed the top 100 finance Substacks, provides some insights in that regard. His finding was that this is a “winner takes the most” market, where the big creators capture most of the subscribers.

And the top ten publications also plausibly out-earn the remaining ninety (from the Top 100) combined, and where the gap between the top four and everybody else runs to orders of magnitude.

“Overall the Finance Substack space is a ‘winner takes the most’ market. It is likely that the top 10 Finance Substacks generate more revenue than the bottom 90 combined. The difference in revenue with the top 4 finance newsletters is massive, orders of magnitude.

“For the top of the list I had to lean on a tool called Substats.io, which estimates paid subscribers and revenue from public data and claims roughly a 15% margin of error against confirmed figures elsewhere. It puts Michael Burry at $8.4m, Citrini at $6.7m, Doomberg at $4.5m, and Compounding Quality at $4.9m. Take the ranking with a pinch of salt since there’s no date attached to it. Citrini has since overtaken Burry and Doomberg has overtaken Compounding Quality, based on their current leaderboard positions.”

His revenue figures come from a third-party estimation tool with a stated margin of error around fifteen percent and no date attached, so hold the specific numbers loosely. But his conclusions seem directionally right: There is an absolutely brutal “winner takes all” dynamic at play on Substack. Pure capitalism.

Sociologists have a name for this. Robert Merton called it the Matthew effect in a 1968 paper in Science, after the line in Matthew 25 about how those who already have will be given more. He was studying scientific credit: when two researchers produce comparable work, the more eminent one collects most of the recognition, which makes her more eminent still, which makes the next round even more lopsided.

Network scientists describe the same mechanism as preferential attachment. New connections attach to nodes that already have many connections. Advantage compounds on itself with no reference to merit, and once it starts, it is close to self-sustaining.

Every discovery mechanism on a platform like Substack works this way. Recommendations flow from large accounts to other large accounts. Leaderboards rank by size and then feed the ranking back into discovery. A writer with a hundred thousand subscribers has a hundred thousand recommendation slots to give away. I have far fewer. The size of his/her audience gives him/her authority.

To give you a sense of the arithmetic on my end, I am adding roughly 100 to 200 free subscribers a month, and that trend points down, while writers a few tiers up add thousands in the same window. These figures are unfathomable to me. Mostapha from , who, if you’ve tuned into my podcast with him, you will know, is an incredibly generous and supportive fellow writer, shared with me that he has a few Notes that have gained him an incredible amount of new followers and subscribers.

My hunch is that the explanation for this is a combination of the factors mentioned above (Bestseller lists, cross-recommendations across big accounts, authority bias) and possibly a Substack algorithm that favors both small (to keep them on the platform) and big writers.

Those sitting somewhere in the middle are having a tough time.

3) Where you come in!

So today I decided to “declare war” on that algorithm. Which is where you come in.

One writer I use as a “North Star” is , who has built a large audience, converts free readers to paid at a rate I would love to match, and whose investing philosophy overlaps with mine a good bit. My understanding is that a public endorsement from Michael Burry preceded a step change in his paid subscriber count, and that he has referred to it himself. Take that as secondhand information, because it is.

Still, the mechanism is what I want you to notice. One credible person vouching moved more than any individual write-up ever did. One member in a group chat set up by put it very succinctly today:

“[A]udiences on Substack are signal seeking much more by reputation these days than by the quality of the investment write up or thesis.“ - The Polymath Investor

Reputation travels through people. And that dear second-level thinkers makes word of mouth the one distribution channel the algorithm does not control, and it is the reason I am about to ask you for something.

If you have gotten value out of what I publish, and you would put your own name behind the quality of it, help me get the signal out! Occasionally is enough. Think about who in your orbit would actually benefit: somebody who just started investing and is drowning in noise, somebody who has been at it for a decade and reads deep dives properly and recognizes the amount of works it requires to put in to release a deep dive likes the ones I publish regularly, a colleague who keeps asking you what to buy, an online friend in a Discord or a WhatsApp group where investing comes up, A Reddit thread on a company I covered (or one asking for great writers in the finance niche), a finance student, somebody who writes or podcasts in this space themselves.

Then pitch me to them. Forward your favorite free article with a line of your own attached (the “Library” has a full overview if you want to pick.

Send them the podcast. Restack a Note with a comment rather than a bare like, because comments carry considerably more reach. Recommend the publication from your own Substack if you have one.

Any of it helps more than you would think.

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A New Incentive System

Do it out of goodwill if that is enough.

If you would rather have an external incentive (should I really insert Munger’s famous quote here? I pass), I just lowered the thresholds on the referral program, so a free paid subscription is now within reach for a handful of signups (8 referrals for 3 months, 20 for 9 months & a free investing ebook for 3 referrals).

4) Am I publishing too much?

Last thing, and this one is more of me practising self-reflection rather than asking you for a favor.

I sometimes suspect I put out too much, which sounds counterintuitive.

I work hard, I love writing, and when a piece is finished, I want it in your hands. There is no release strategy behind any of it. No every-fourth-day cadence, no drip schedule, no holding a good post back until Tuesday because Tuesday performs better or whatever.

Quality first always – I take as much time as it takes –, then out the door. That is my “system” (lol).

But Herbert Simon made an observation in 1971 that I keep bumping into. A wealth of information, he wrote, creates a poverty of attention. Information consumes the attention of whoever receives it, so abundance on one side manufactures scarcity on the other.

Here is what August looked like.

So I would rather ask you than guess. Would you prefer everything, exactly as it arrives now? Would a monthly index help, one that sorts the month into what is core and what is peripheral so you can skip with confidence? Or would you rather I simply published less and made each piece count for more? But then again, I put my everything into each piece either way.

Leave a comment or respond to the email, and tell me. I read all of them.

That’s it for today, dear second-level thinkers. That’s it for this more personal article. I’m curious how you feel about this format.

Regards René

I was on the podcast of this week, and somewhere in the middle host Siem asked me a question I hadn’t prepared for. Not about a company, or a macro theme, or a mental model. He asked what I actually want to accomplish with my content.

My answer was, more or less, nothing in particular.

No revenue target. No subscriber number. No plan to turn this into something. I first and foremost write because I like writing – and the same could be said about creating video content, sharing insights on X/Substack Notes/Threads, recording podcasts, etc. –, and because I like the work that has to happen before the writing: the reading of company filings, listening to earnings calls, thinking critically and, at times, creatively, doing research on a current them, picking the right valuation model for a company at hand, depending on its profile and maturity, the slow (or sometimes fast) process of a business becoming legible to me.

If I stopped publishing tomorrow, I would probably still do most of it. The publishing part just makes me do it properly. In fact, this is what I like Substack and writing written research notes much better than creating YouTube content. The audience on Substack’s platform allows me to go really deep on companies, the management team, the financials, risks, etc. YouTube rewards videos with mass appeal, with clickbaity titles and thumbnails, shallow analysis that doesn’t go too deep.

Substack is different.

But back to the podcast. I think that answer may sound evasive on the podcast. It isn’t. It’s the most useful thing I’ve figured out in the past six years of creating stock market-related content on various platforms.

Some takeaways and goals (seven in total):

#1 – Producing beats consuming

If I had to name one life-hack that has actually made me happier, it’s this: spend more of your day producing than consuming. Doing as opposed to just sitting around, staring at the wall or doomscrolling your TikTok feed.

Not because producing is virtuous, but because consuming leaves nothing behind. You finish a day of binge-watching a new Netflix series, and you have nothing you can point at. You finish a day of writing, drawing, taking photos, building a map for a video game, recording a tutorial for your university peers, WHATEVER (!), and there’s a thing that didn’t exist that morning, however small, however flawed.

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#2 – Focus on what you can control

The second part of the same idea: point your effort at the things you actually control.

I have no direct control over whether this newsletter reaches 10,000 subscribers. None. That number is a function of the algorithm, the market cycle, whether someone with a big audience happens to restack me on a Tuesday. Treating it as a goal to hit by deadline X is a way of making my mood a function of other people’s decisions.

What I do control is a) the cadence – whether a piece goes out when I said it would, how regularly I show up for my audience. And b) the quality – whether the analysis is deep enough that you couldn’t have gotten it somewhere else.

That’s it.

Welcome to Compound with René. You can find an overview of the companies I shared a deep dive on in the visualization below.

If you haven’t subscribed, you can join 4,600 readers who enjoy the quality of the deep dives, the process-oriented pieces, the analytical insight, and the valuation discipline here:

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#3 – Attracting the right people

The nice thing about optimizing for quality rather than reach is that it selects your readers for you. I can see this in our WhatsApp community, and it’s the part of this whole “project” I’m most proud of. Nobody is posting rocket emojis. People show up with actual expertise from their actual jobs or their investing background and the research they have done. Everyone is friendly, curious, and useful. I didn’t engineer that. It’s what you get when the front door is a 6,000+-word deep dive rather than a hot take or a shallow analysis.

I like to think of this as a form of survivorship bias. Do you have the attention span to consume deeper critical analyses, or are you looking for easy fixes and answers?

#4 – 1,000 true fans?

A few weeks ago crossed 1,000 paid subscribers, and in the post about it, he referred to Kevin Kelly’s essay, 1,000 True Fans – at least indirectly.

First: what an accomplishment! Congrats to him. I exchanged a couple of DMs with him a few months ago, and he struck me as a genuinely nice person willing to help and support others.

Anyone who has tried to convince even one stranger on the internet to pay for written work knows what a thousand of them represents.

Second: the essay lodged itself in my head and hasn’t left.

Kelly published it on The Technium in March 2008, and a core pillar of the essay is the concept of the “Long Tail” in light of the creator economy. It was the fashionable idea back then and everyone was celebrating what it did for consumers.

“This new ability for the creator to retain the full price is revolutionary, but a second technological innovation amplifies that power further. A fundamental virtue of a peer-to-peer network (like the web) is that the most obscure node is only one click away from the most popular node. In other words the most obscure under-selling book, song, or idea, is only one click away from the best selling book, song or idea. Early in the rise of the web the large aggregators of content and products, such as eBay, Amazon, Netflix, etc, noticed that the total sales of *all* the lowest selling obscure items would equal or in some cases exceed the sales of the few best selling items. Chris Anderson (my successor at Wired) named this effect “The Long Tail,” for the visually graphed shape of the sales distribution curve: a low nearly interminable line of items selling only a few copies per year that form a long “tail” for the abrupt vertical beast of a few bestsellers. But the area of the tail was as big as the head. With that insight, the aggregators had great incentive to encourage audiences to click on the obscure items. They invented recommendation engines and other algorithms to channel attention to the rare creations in the long tail. Even web search companies like Google, Bing, Baidu found it in their interests to reward searchers with the obscure because they could sell ads in the long tail as well. The result was that the most obscure became less obscure.“

However, the “Long Tail” brought its own set of problems:

“The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches.

But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators. Individual artists, producers, inventors and makers are overlooked in the equation. The long tail does not raise the sales of creators much, but it does add massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices. Unless artists become a large aggregator of other artist’s works, the long tail offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.”

His way out was effectively the concept of “1,000 true fans.”

A creator... needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

The arithmetic is almost insultingly simple. A “true fan,” according to Kelly, is someone who will buy anything you produce. Get $100 a year from each – Kelly frames it elsewhere in the essay as roughly one day’s wages, which I find an interesting way to think about it – keep the full amount because they pay you directly, and a thousand of them is $100,000. “A living for most folks,” he writes (remember that the piece was released in 2008). Not a fortune. A living.

What made the idea stick with a large audience is his reframing. Kelly’s point is that a thousand is a number a human being can hold in their head. “You might even be able to remember a thousand names. If you added one new true fan per day, it’d only take a few years to gain a thousand.”

5 – But Substack is plateauing and AI is coming for writers …

I’ve read several pieces recently arguing that Substack is plateauing. That writing is doomed as AI is broadly adopted. That the competition has become brutal. That big and small writers alike are struggling to grow at all.

And in the comments under one of my own posts, someone recently made the point that when this exuberant market finally turns – and it will eventually – the appetite for equity research specifically will dry up, and a lot of “us” will stop.

I think all of that is basically right, and none of it changes what I’m doing.

Here’s why:

Every one of those forces is a filter on the median, not on the work. AI has made competent writing easier, almost infinite, which means competent writing (grammar, style, vocabulary) is now worth roughly what it costs. What it has not done, and I don’t think will do anytime soon, is generate the thing that actually moves an investment view: outside-the-box thinking, a mental model built over decades of watching businesses succeed and fail applied to a new analysis, the creative leap of noticing that this company is really the same shape as that one from a different industry twenty years ago, identifying inflection points. Genuine insight. Valuable insight because it is not priced in by the market.

The bull market ending doesn’t destroy that – it just thins out the people who were just in this for a quick buck or the fame.

Over the very long term, anyone who delivers more value than they charge will find an audience. That is a timeless business mechanism.

#6 – The part I’m bad at

The uncomfortable corollary is that providing value and being found are two different problems.

wrote something in early July in an article that genuinely deflated me for an hour:

“Not every investment has an equal reward. This is equally true in business as it is in Substack. To date, all of my posts combined have brought me a total of 98 subscribers. My top performing (and first ever) note has also brought me exactly 98 subscribers. My posts have taken hundreds of hours of painstaking research, writing and editing. My note took me about 10 minutes to write.”

I know this feeling in my bones. I have published pieces that cost me three weekends and a fair chunk of my sanity and added, net, zero subscribers.

That is not a rare event. That is a normal Tuesday.

Want to see a current example? Below you see the stats of yesterday’s write-up “8 Signs the AI Bubble Is Further Along Than You Think“ that has genuinely done quite well in terms of likes received and comments shared. New subscribers added: 1.

Or my latest deep dive on Amadeus IT Group, which I spent hours and hours researching (+ building a valuation model, + creating a custom slide deck) while on holiday. One new free subscriber. Zero new paying subscribers.

I think this is another advantage I may have over some other investors who aren’t in this for the long run. I love studying businesses. So sure, there are brief moments of disappointment. But usually I just shrug for a moment and then move on. On to the next deep dive!

Kelly is blunt about this in the essay, too, and it’s the paragraph I keep skipping over and shouldn’t. Cultivating true fans is …

“time consuming, sometimes nerve racking, and not for everyone.”

Some creators, he says, “should just paint, or sew, or make music” and let somebody else handle the fans. That’s me. I would rather spend eleven hours reconstructing a segment’s true economics than eleven minutes writing a note about it.

#7 – Because the A in SMART stands for attainable

So why am I still writing down a number?

The old SMART framework is a corporate cliché at this point, but the A is what I had to think of regardless. Goals are supposed to be attainable – stretchy enough to pull you forward, plausible enough that your brain doesn’t file them under fantasy and stop trying.

A million readers is not attainable (for me at least) and, worse, it isn’t even meaningful as a target. Kelly says this directly: “Millions of paying fans is not a realistic goal to shoot for, especially when you are starting out. But a thousand fans is doable.”

And here’s the part that makes me think it isn’t arrogance to say it out loud: There are hundreds of millions of people investing globally. If one in a million of them wants what I specifically offer – global equity research for people who love businesses, obsessed with quality and disciplined valuation, no hype, deep analytical work for the patient minority – that’s still a large enough pool. Compared to some other nichés, the investing TAM is absolutely massive!

Kelly’s line: “any 1-in-a-million appeal can find 1,000 true fans. The trick is to practically find those fans, or more accurately, to have them find you.”

I’m confident in the work. As outlined, not yet in the marketing. But I will try to do better on that front too. And I’m learning from others too – both big (such as or ) and small (such as , , or )

And of course you can help me to by spreading the word, leaving a comment occasionally, restacking a write-up. You might want to start right now?

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Wrapping up

We’re closing in on 5,000 free subscribers. Eighteen months ago that number was one, and it was me. My YouTube audience gave me a 100 subscriber boost, but that was about it (generally, I’ve found that YouTube subscribers translate very poorly to blog subscribers).

I don’t take it for granted, and I’m aware of how much of it is timing, luck, and the generosity of people who restacked something when they didn’t have to.

A thousand true fans is a long way off. A very long way in fact. I might never get there. But one can dream big, right?

The market may turn, the appetite for this kind of work may thin out, and the honest answer is that most of that is outside my control anyway. But the target is doing something useful in the meantime: it keeps me pointed at depth instead of reach, at the hundred people who read every word instead of the ten thousand who opened one thing once.

Kelly calls it “a much saner destiny to hope for.” I’ll take that. And in the meantime, the only two things I actually control are showing up on schedule and doing work that’s worth your time.

That, I can promise.

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1) What kind of companies do I cover?

I research high-quality businesses from all around the world – regardless of market cap. That might mean a German $200 million market cap serial acquirer, a small-cap quiet Canadian software compounder, or a well-known U.S. tech name like IBKR. I consider myself a generalist with few limitations. Dogmatic style boxes don’t interest me – flexibility is a superpower.

That said, there are a few hard and fast rules I try to stick to: I’m not interested in below-average businesses or structurally bad industries: no airlines, no commodity plays, mostly no retail, no auto parts manufacturing, no banks or insurance. I’d rather spend 40 hours up front understanding a truly great business – one I can hold for years – than chase cheapness for cheapness’s sake. Over time, I’ve learnt that a high-quality business at 18x FCF will often massively outperform a “6x cigar butt” and cause far less emotional stress along the way. I VERY rarely look at companies sub $100 million market cap.

TL;DR: I research high-quality businesses operating in above-average industries from all across the globe, regardless of market cap (but usually above $100 million in market cap).

PS: Always remember that the blog pays for itself – often several times over – with just one good investment idea. Similarly, one investing mistake that could’ve been avoided by becoming a better investor, costs more than a year of this blog.

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2) How often do I publish?

As often as possible – without compromising depth or enjoyment. Some weeks, I’ll publish 4–5 shorter posts, quick pitches, new ideas, new quality stocks to put on your highly-selective watchlist, or portfolio updates. Other times, I’ll go quiet for a bit while I work on a deep dive that requires serious upfront research.

I will always prioritize quality over rushing out as many superficial posts as possible, because I believe you do too.

Here’s an overview of the stocks we covered in depth in the first 12 months of running this blog:

You can find a comprehensive overview of all previously published posts here:

3) Are these posts actually any good?

Best way to find out: check the “Free Sample Posts” section. You’ll see the depth, thought process, and clarity I aim to bring to every write-up.

Moreover, many of most of my posts for paying subscribers include some free sections before the paywall, so even if you’re on the free tier, there’s plenty to explore, and you should be able to develop a feel for the depth I provide (consider the table of contents I often include in the introductions).

Below you also find some of the testimonials I have received more recently:

I will also attach one testimonial that meant the world to me when I first saw it because Jake Barfield is a professional fund manager whose philosophy is very much aligned with my own, and the analyses he shares are always of the highest quality!

4) Annual Subscriber? Join the Paid Subscriber WhatsApp Group (optional, but highly recommended):

Many of the best insights happen between the lines – in conversations, not just posts.
If you are on the annual plan and you'd like to connect with other serious investors and me, I run a private WhatsApp group for paying subs.

5) And one more thing (the most important of all ...):

While “turning over rocks” and bringing high-quality stocks from all across the globe to your attention is certainly a key focus of this Substack, this blog isn’t just about stock write-ups. It’s also about improving how you think. I regularly share mental models, decision frameworks, and process-focused pieces that will help you become a better investor over time – the kind of material most people ignore, but that compounds in ways stock picks alone rarely do.

Here’s one example, but there are plenty more in the “Processes & Mental Models“ section:

As my friend Tiho Brkan put it, this [focusing on improving your own processes] is where you get the “most bang for your buck”:

I firmly believe this is an area most investing blogs overlook. The majority of readers chase “quick fixes,” not realizing that, more often than not, the smartest move is to do nothing at all. The idea that someone can consistently produce new, “actionable stock ideas” every week is unrealistic – and setting that expectation in fact only reinforces wrong incentives.

Frequency feels good. It creates the illusion of control. But in investing, infrequency is where the real profits lie. Doing less isn’t laziness — it’s an acknowledgment that great ideas are rare, while noise is constant.

Rather than constantly transacting, I advocate for a different approach: build a curated watchlist of 200–300 best-in-class businesses from around the world, continuously refine it, and wait patiently for a few compelling opportunities each year. When Mr. Market misprices something truly exceptional, that’s when you act. That’s the philosophy Buffett and Munger themselves have always promoted:

"The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing." – Warren Buffett

“It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait.” – Charlie Munger

"You don’t get paid for activity, you only get paid for being right." – Warren Buffett

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PS: Here’s another piece that showcases how I can help you elevate how you think about your investment processes:

Disclaimer: The analysis presented in this blog may be flawed and/or critical information may have been overlooked. The content provided should be considered an educational resource and should not be construed as individualized investment advice, nor as a recommendation to buy or sell specific securities. I may own some of the securities discussed. The stocks, funds, and assets discussed are examples only and may not be appropriate for your individual circumstances. It is the responsibility of the reader to do their own due diligence before investing in any index fund, ETF, asset, or stock mentioned or before making any sell decisions. Also double-check if the comments made are accurate. You should always consult with a financial advisor before purchasing a specific stock and making decisions regarding your portfolio.

Now, a Bit About Me

I’m René Sellmann. I live in Düsseldorf, Germany, where I split my time between teaching and thinking obsessively about investing. What began with a casual conversation about ETFs at a friend’s party quickly spiraled into a full-blown intellectual pursuit – one that’s now shaped nearly every day of my life for close to a decade.

I write, podcast, and post regularly to share ideas that help long-term investors refine their process, think independently, and stay grounded when the market isn’t.

What makes this blog different isn’t flashy predictions or clickbait takes – it’s clarity, rationality, and sharp analysis. I focus on the mechanics of compounding in ultra-high-quality stocks, stakeholder alignment, capital reinvestment, and durability.

My content is shaped by real skin in the game: I share my portfolio updates, mental models, and decision-making frameworks (including spreadsheets), all built over years of studying what separates enduring businesses from fragile ones. I gravitate toward companies that quietly compound, often overlooked but structurally advantaged, and I write for people who want to understand why compounding at a market-beating rate works.

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If you want to know more about how I think – what I believe makes a quality business, how I’ve evolved as an investor, and what lessons I’ve learned from both wins and mistakes – I invite you to read the in-depth interview I linked below. It’s probably the clearest articulation yet of what my philosophy is all about: building conviction, avoiding noise, and compounding with intention.

Why Subscribe?

There’s no shortage of noise in the world of investing – hot takes, hype cycles, and surface-level analysis. This publication is about cutting through that noise.

Here, you’ll find …

• deep dives into truly exceptional businesses from all across the world – from German small-cap serial acquirers to well-known US tech companies,

• mental models and processes to improve your decision-making, and

• honest reflections on my own investing process.

Whether it’s breaking down valuation frameworks, exploring macro shifts, or analyzing capital allocation through the lens of stakeholder dynamics, every post is crafted to help you think clearer and compound smarter.

I don’t write for speculators chasing the next pop.

I write for long-term investors...

✅ Who care more about process than predictions
✅ Who study businesses to build conviction, not just buy tickers
✅ Who treat portfolio management as a craft that can add material alpha
✅ Who believe valuation is both art and discipline
✅ Who understand that patience, clarity, and curiosity are a real edge
✅ Who think in decades – not news cycles

If that sounds like your kind of thing – no fluff, no gimmicks, just real-world investing insight – I’d love for you to subscribe.

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What You Get as a Paid Member

Becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to everything I’ve built to help you compound better:

💡 Highly (!) in-depth analyses of the world’s best businesses — uncover unique investment opportunities that never show up on CNBC. You also unlock the full archive of previously published deep dives.

📈 Regular Portfolio Updates — complete transparency into my investing decisions and company-level updates, plus unique takes on macro developments, market dynamics, and exclusive interviews with operators and thinkers I trust.

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Disclaimer: The analysis presented in this blog may be flawed and/or critical information may have been overlooked. The content provided should be considered an educational resource and should not be construed as individualized investment advice, nor as a recommendation to buy or sell specific securities. I may own some of the securities discussed. The stocks, funds, and assets discussed are examples only and may not be appropriate for your individual circumstances. It is the responsibility of the reader to do their own due diligence before investing in any index fund, ETF, asset, or stock mentioned or before making any sell decisions. Also double-check if the comments made are accurate. You should always consult with a financial advisor before purchasing a specific stock and making decisions regarding your portfolio.

Why I Focus on Quality: A Candid Interview on My Investing Framework

Recently, I had the chance to sit down for a written interview with Yorrin, who runs the excellent Substack . We covered everything from my early days as an investor to the mental models and principles that shape how I think today. It turned into a wide-ranging reflection on quality, conviction, mistakes, and what it really means to play the long game.

Hope you enjoy.

Topics we covered:

• How I got into investing (and why it became a lifelong obsession)

• What “quality” means to me—and how that definition evolved

• The thesis behind Interactive Brokers and what it taught me

• My shift from deep value to high-quality compounders

• Investing mistakes I’ve made and what I learned from them

• Why I’ve moved away from “buy what you know”

• How I think about conviction, sizing, and portfolio construction

• My biggest edge as an investor today

• How I avoid falling in love with a stock

• Thoughts on macro vs. micro focus

• Why selling is harder than it looks

• The intention behind my content and how it sharpens my thinking

• The kind of businesses I naturally gravitate toward

• One company I’d hold for the next 10 years

• Advice to investors just starting out

• My most overrated investing concept

• What I want my body of work to reflect, 10 years from now

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Let’s start with the person behind the investor. Can you tell us a bit about yourself—where you’re from, how old you are, what your background looks like, and what you enjoy doing outside of investing and creating content?

I'm René Sellmann. I live in Germany, where I split my time between teaching and obsessing over investing and content creation.

Outside of investing, I enjoy breaking down and studying mental models, hosting investing Zoom calls, and nerding out over strategy in everything from businesses to stock picking.

I post my content on various platforms, including YouTube, Substack, X/Threads, and a podcast, where I share my thoughts on the craft of investing.

Can you take me back to the very beginning? What drew you into investing, not just as a way to make money, but as something worth dedicating serious time and energy to?

Honestly, I don’t remember exactly what sparked my interest in investing. What I do recall is that, back around 2017, at a friend’s party, people were discussing ETFs in the kitchen (everyone’s favorite spot at a home party, right?), and I must have been intrigued and looked up the concept afterwards. I was already 27 back then. My parents didn’t teach me anything about investing. But as I started earning more serious money, it’s only natural to start thinking about what to do with the cash that starts piling up.

Ever since, I've been obsessed with investing, consuming everything I got my hands on (books, podcasts, YouTube). After three years, in 2020, I began working on the content for a mentorship program that I had planned to launch, and continued working on it for another 2-3 years. This helped me gain confidence in what I know, provided clarity about how I want and don’t want to invest, and I laid out my investing philosophy in great detail in written form, which I still rely on today.

Overall, what turned a casual interest into a deep, enduring passion was realizing how investing could act as a lens through which to understand the world. That’s what I enjoy about this discipline so much. Businesses become stories of human behavior, incentives, culture, competitive environments, and systems thinking. The process of studying businesses rewards humility, encourages patience, and offers compounding returns not just financially, but intellectually. That’s when I knew I was in this for the long haul. Ever since that kitchen conversation, I’ve spent almost every single day thinking about investment processes and related ideas, attempting to become someone who thinks more critically.

You’ve built your philosophy around high-quality companies. What does “quality” mean to you personally, and how did you arrive at that definition over time?

For me, “quality” is about resilience, predictability, and reinvestment opportunities. A quality company can take a punch – whether from competition (e.g. TikTok or Snap’s “attacks” on Meta), macro shifts (e.g. Starbucks leveraging mobile ordering and loyalty apps), or even internal mistakes (Chipotle overhauling its supply chains in light of the E. coli Crisis) – and still emerge stronger. I think that’s something Jamie Dimon recently also stressed during an interview. Great businesses benefit from crises if you can zoom out a little.

So quality means a durable moat, yes, but also a business model that generates excess cash and has plenty of room to redeploy the cash internally, and finally, there’s a leadership team that allocates it with skill and integrity.

Over time, I’ve become less interested in traditional measures of “growth” and more attuned to how a company grows (remember the compounding formula made up of reinvestment rate + return on incremental investments), how long it can grow at high rates and reinvest at high incremental returns, and why it wins (and will keep winning) over competitors.

Quality also encompasses visibility and predictability, which Dev Kantesaria recently discussed in an interview. He said:

This is reminding me of all the microcaps pitched on X and Substack all the time. You’ll discover some impressive winners with the benefit of hindsight – stocks that went up 100x or even 1,000x – but could you have predicted such an outcome with a high degree of certainty? Sometimes sure. But you also have to be honest with yourself and wonder, “How much of the outcome was driven by ‘luck’?” How high was the probability of a permanent loss of capital? (think of highly speculative one-product pharma companies) I don’t think there’s anything wrong with microcaps, just to be clear, but the risk associated with (some of) them is sometimes underdiscussed in my view.

So a high-quality business also entails a high degree of certainty that the business will be better ten years from now, which in my view, is a requirement to be able to value a business in the first place – without predictability, there’s no proper valuation work.

My definition of quality has evolved by studying companies that compound somewhat quietly. Wise is a great example: customer love translates into lower churn, which reduces CAC (a very low figure for Wise anyway), leading to solid margins that fund product improvements... and so the flywheel gets going. I’m sure many of the people following me have seen the flywheel illustration shared by Wise’s IR team itself.

That kind of flywheel is hard to disrupt, primarily because it is based on scale economies shared and an internal culture obsessed with sharing scale benefits with customers, which is extremely difficult to establish (and maintain) at a company and management level. I genuinely consider this moat the strongest one out there. Consider the German retailer Aldi – I don’t see Aldi being disrupted over the next 20-30 years, as no one can compete with them on price (although I think Aldi has lost market share more recently; this is probably worth researching further).

Similarly, Wise reinvests in “price,” which is a fascinating concept I recently wrote about in a blog. IBKR, another SES (scale economies shared) business, also reinvests uniquely: its balance sheet strength.

Quality Investing with René Sellmann

Not All Reinvestment Is the Same: How Two Companies Reinvented Growth Strategies

Long-term investors are always on the lookout for businesses that can generate exceptional returns over time. Finding the next Amazon, Netflix, or Constellation Software is what every investor dreams of…

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2 years ago · 6 likes · Rene

Another layer of my framework is stakeholder alignment. If the customers, employees, and shareholders can all win simultaneously, you're probably looking at a high-quality business. That’s rare – and often worth paying for, which is something I still need to work on.

I could continue this list for a long time, but I think you get the idea.

In summary, I’d say I no longer view quality as a filter. It’s the foundation. If a business lacks it, no valuation discount is enough to make it interesting to me (unless I start deviating from my core principles, which unfortunately has happened in the past).

I think that’s an idea – the idea of just not investing in average quality enterprises – Chris Hohn also recently talked about in an interview with Norges Bank Investment Management (I highly recommend this one).

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Disclaimer: The analysis presented in this blog may be flawed and/or critical information may have been overlooked. The content provided should be considered an educational resource and should not be construed as individualized investment advice, nor as a recommendation to buy or sell specific securities. I may own some of the securities discussed. The stocks, funds, and assets discussed are examples only and may not be appropriate for your individual circumstances. It is the responsibility of the reader to do their own due diligence before investing in any index fund, ETF, asset, or stock mentioned or before making any sell decisions. Also double-check if the comments made are accurate. You should always consult with a financial advisor before purchasing a specific stock and making decisions regarding your portfolio.

What was your first investment where you truly felt like you had an edge, or at least a thesis you fully believed in? What did that experience teach you?

Interactive Brokers might not be the first company where I felt like I had real insight, but it’s a fairly recent one that comes to mind here – it’s probably not the first one. I always bring up Capri Holdings as my first “homerun-investment,” where I was able to buy it at what I believed was 1-2x FCF during the Covid panic.

However, let’s return to IBKR and the insights I gained regarding this stock... Many investors around me use/used it – especially serious investors – but I noticed that it was rarely discussed as a stock. Due to the business's ownership structure, the research terminals have the margin structure incorrect, which may cause this idea to screen poorly. Most investors were focused on flashy growth names or well-known value plays, while IBKR is quietly executing with high margins (70%+ pretax margins), a founder-led culture, and a moat built on automation and cost leadership.

What gave me confidence was my understanding of the aforementioned scale economies shared model. Peterffy being vocal on earnings calls about how undervalued the stock is also helped. Talking to my buddy Andrew and discussing the idea privately was great too. Rob Vinall owning shares and sharing his thesis in one of his letters may have been another piece. I understood how sticky the product was/is. I could go on forever...

The biggest lesson? You don’t need to outsmart everyone. You just need to notice what others ignore. And often, the best insights are hiding in plain sight. One thing I’ve come to appreciate is that some of the best-performing ideas are also the least noisy. They don’t trend on X, they rarely make headlines. But while others chase what’s loud, real compounding in underlying business value often happens in the quiet, not receiving the media attention it probably deserves.

Looking back a few years, how has your investing style evolved? What changed—and what stayed the same?

In the early days, like most, I was to some extent drawn to the “romanticism” of typical value stocks – digging for statistically cheap stocks that looked “misunderstood” – copying Pabrai’s GrafTech bet comes to mind here (and, of course, it didn't go all too well; at least the downside was fairly protected). However, over time, I realized that “cheap” often comes with a cost: capital intensity, weak moats, management that treats shareholders as an afterthought, and so on.

The shift toward quality came gradually. I started to ask: What kind of business can I confidently own through multiple cycles? What companies could I talk about with conviction even if their stock price was down 30% or more? That shift led me toward high-ROIIC businesses, recurring revenue models, founder-led firms, and companies with “ecosystem control” (a concept coined by Dennis Hong, if I remember correctly).

What stayed the same is the curiosity and the belief that long-term thinking is a competitive edge. However, what changed is that I now view investing less as finding statistical bargains and more as identifying excellence that’s worth paying up for – and no, I’m not talking about paying 10 times sales.

Was there a particular investment you got wrong that forced you to reevaluate how you think about businesses or risk? What shifted for you afterward?

Before I discuss some specific mistakes, let me make a general comment here: discussing mistakes can be painful. As human beings, we often dislike facing what is uncomfortable. But you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to turn your costly mistakes into valuable learning lessons.

I recently came across a tweet from Dr. Hugh Akston (@Akston_Capital), who essentially attempted to publicly humiliate himself by tweeting about how he had ignored his own investment principles when taking a stab at UnitedHealth after the recent significant price drop. I found this a remarkable way to deal with one’s mistake.

He tweeted:

And before this, he wrote:

I absolutely love this mindset and think more investors should adopt it.

Now, turning to some of the mistakes I’ve made. I’ve started sharing some annual reflections toward the end of the year – sort of a year-end letter. Inspired by Francois Rochon, I’ll include a “podium of mistakes” in each letter. You can read my 2024 reflections here, which include my top three mistakes.

Quality Investing with René Sellmann

Year-End Reflections: Lessons, Mistakes, and Successes from 2024

As 2024 draws to a close, I find it incredibly valuable to take time to reflect on the past year. This annual exercise of revisiting successes, analyzing mistakes, and realigning strategies has been inspired by some of my investing friends, like Andrew and Ruki, as well as renowned investors who diligently conduct similar reviews…

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2 years ago · 2 likes · Rene

In my 7-8 years of investing, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, of course. Just to list a few:

• I experienced my first permanent capital loss in German microcap stock Endor. It’d be easy to blame the management team here or the German insolvency law framework (I could probably write an entire book about the events that I think unfolded here behind the curtains), but I probably could’ve simply dodged this bullet altogether by sticking to my quality filters. Additionally, the thesis began to deteriorate over time, and investors like Luiz Sanchez from LVS Advisory were able to exit this one, I assume at a loss, while I convinced myself that it was “too cheap” to sell.

• Overestimating Alibaba’s ability to continue growing in a highly competitive Chinese market.

• Selling Apple in late February or early March of 2020 and never reentering.

Who are some of the investors or thinkers that have influenced your approach the most, and how have you made their ideas your own rather than just following them?

There are too many to list, I guess. Phil Town, Geoff from Focused Compound, and Pabrai had a significant early influence on me, and “novice investor René” certainly learned a great deal from their writing and public appearances.

A little later, Nick Sleep was foundational, too. His idea that companies that create more value for the customer than they retain for themselves will outperform over time – that was a major unlock for me. But there are obviously more hidden gems in the Nomad letters.

Rob Vinall taught me the value of patience, flexibility, and direct communication. His letters don’t try to impress – they try to focus on what matters. They are always following a fundamentals-first principle. The letters (and, of course, his bets) reflect the flexibility in his approach, oftentimes causing a great deal of cognitive dissonance on my end (how can a quality-focused investor venture into a Scandinavian oil stock?). He’s a contrarian by nature. And he’s always trying to anticipate where the puck is going. That style seeped into how I invest, how I write on my Substack, and how I document my thinking privately.

Dennis Hong’s idea of ecosystem control has also become a mental model I use regularly. I now ask: “Can this business shape the rules of its niche?” That’s a different question than “Is this company a category leader?” Generally, conducting a stakeholder analysis is an activity more investors should probably spend time on – I think the investors of Ensemble Capital once wrote a great article, or maybe even a multi-part series, on this topic.

More recently, I’m chatting a lot with Tiho Brkan via WhatsApp, exchanging ideas. I think he’s sort of seeing a mentee in me. He’s heavily leaning into the domain of behavioral finance, and always thinking about how and where to gain a behavioral edge to add a few percentage points of alpha to your overall performance. All of this is certainly very thought-provoking, and I’ve become very open-minded to the idea of “reading the market’s pulse.” I’ve written a bit about this here:

Quality Investing with René Sellmann

From Soros to Buffett: Exploring the Art and Science of Market Timing

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” —Marcel Proust…

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a year ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Rene

I’m much more fundamental-focused, but if I can adopt a few of his ideas and learn to better exploit the animal spirits in markets, this could certainly add a nice one or two percentage points here and there. I certainly hope so.

If you have the time, I recommend listening to our 3-part podcast conversation – here’s part 1 (you can also find it in your podcast app – my podcast is called No More Investing Secrets):

The common thread across all of these thinkers is that they each helped me build a clearer lens. But I always remix those ideas to match my personality and temperament, my circle of competence, and my personal values. I think that’s an important point worth stressing. You have to find what works for you.

Is there a commonly accepted investing idea or principle you’ve moved away from over time? What led you to question it?

Yes – “buy what you know.” It sounds great at first, especially for beginners. The idea is to invest in companies you interact with regularly so you understand the product or service. And, of course, that idea is not wrong; my investing buddy, Andrew Letendre, 100% sticks to it, and he’s doing very well for himself.

I’m also not questioning the power of being exclusively focused on companies whose value proposition you 100% understand from a customer point of view. I think that’s an excellent filter to have. However, over time, I personally found it slightly limiting. Just because you’re not a customer doesn’t mean you cannot understand the business model, the capital intensity, the competitive dynamics, or the management quality. Additionally, B2B businesses tend to be more successful on average than consumer-facing ones.

So I’ve shifted toward “buy what you CAN understand.” Research what excites you. That subtle difference opens the door to much richer opportunities. It allows me to study businesses and industries I don’t personally interact with – like HR software (e.g., Paycom) or cloud providers (e.g., DigitalOcean) –or businesses that are operating in geographies outside of Germany, and still form a valid, high-conviction thesis. Some of the best ideas are things you’d never encounter as a consumer, but which play a massive role behind the scenes. You don’t need to “know” the company from your daily life (which doesn’t harm, of course). You just need to understand how it works and why it wins.

How do you think about conviction? When you size up a position or stick with an idea through volatility, what’s going through your mind?

Conviction, for me, is earned through preparation. It’s easy to feel confident when a stock is going up. But true conviction is tested when everything is red, headlines are scary, and you’re alone in your thinking. That’s when process matters most.

And of course, I size positions based on the depth of my understanding, the quality of the business, and my comfort with the downside, not just the upside potential. The downside risk is what actually matters.

I also think of conviction in layers. First…

1. Is the business model sound and resilient? Is it understandable (also on a unit level)?

2. Are the incentives aligned?

3. What’s management’s capital allocation track record?

4. Do I understand the risks well enough?

5. Finally, price plays a critical role. It’s much easier to have conviction in a stock that’s down 50% and now trading at 5x free cash flow vs. a stock that was cut in half but still trades at 7x sales.

If I can answer those with clarity, I can endure volatility. But if the thesis is shallow or built on borrowed conviction (e.g., from other investors I admire), you probably shouldn’t have invested in the first place.

Some of my mistakes stemmed from imbalance. I either moved too fast, fueled by borrowed conviction, or stayed too passive, despite knowing better, or I acted but bet too small. Research and conviction are two sides of the same coin. Without the former, you're gambling. Without the latter, you're just dabbling. Real investing demands both. It’s what makes investing so hard.

Finally, conviction isn't just about courage. It’s about filtering ruthlessly. If you’re only going to act a few times a year, the bar for pulling the trigger has to be extremely high. That’s what makes those few actions meaningful and what makes it easy to have high conviction in them. Anything less, and the whole philosophy breaks down.

What’s the most challenging part of your process to get right consistently, and how are you working on improving it?

Sizing. Without a doubt. Getting the idea right is one thing – getting the weight right is another game entirely. It’s one of the sources of outperformance.

You can have an outstanding thesis and still underperform if you size it too small. I read this online the other day:

Or, worse, you can size something too large out of excitement, only to realize later that your conviction wasn’t as solid as you thought.

In public markets, I’ve found that true durability at a great entry price – the kind you can underwrite with conviction – is rare and deserves concentration. That’s where the fundamental asymmetry lies.

What makes sizing hard is that it’s not just about math (the Kelly formula sounds good in theory, but it cannot be properly applied in investing due to limited sample sizes and incomplete information) – it’s about self-awareness: what’s a position size I can emotionally handle that still gives me the most possible upside if I’m right? You have to understand your emotional bandwidth. How much volatility can you handle in a prominent position before you start second-guessing yourself?

I’m working on tying position size more explicitly to a framework that includes clarity of thesis, downside protection, moat durability, and management trust. I’ve also started documenting my “pain points” per position – what specific outcomes would make me trim or hold? Which key KPIs do I need to track? So I have a more precise map when stress hits.

Sizing is still part art, part science. But I’m learning to treat it like portfolio architecture, not just random betting.

You create content on X, Substack, and YouTube. How has that public work shaped or sharpened your investing approach?

Creating content has made me a better investor because it forces me to teach. To teach something well, you must understand it at a deeper level.

Moreover, writing and speaking publicly sharpens my thinking in a way that silent research never could. I must structure arguments, anticipate objections, and simplify without compromising clarity.

It also introduces accountability. Once you publish an idea – whether it’s a stock thesis, a mental model, or a portfolio update – you open yourself to feedback. That’s humbling, but incredibly useful.

Some of the best improvements in my process have come from thoughtful pushback in the comments or someone asking a question I hadn’t considered. You can create a beautiful feedback loop: when I publish something and others share their insights or related resources, it expands my perspective. Posting content isn’t just a form of self-expression (which is rewarding in and of itself), but it’s also leading to collaboration with a “global brain trust” of like-minded people in a way.

What’s your intention behind your content? Education, community, accountability, something else? What does success look like for you on that front?

All of the above, but especially community and clarity. I want my content to be a place where thoughtful investors feel less alone. The journey of long-term investing can be a lonely one. You often feel like the only one not chasing the latest hype, the only one still holding through drawdowns, or the only one who cares about reading footnotes in annual reports. My goal is to give people “a voice of reason in a world of noise.” That’s a tagline I came up with and included in a banner in some of my videos.

Metrics like views or subscribers don’t just define success. It’s when an individual tells me: “That post helped me reframe my thinking,” or “You made me curious about something I’d ignored.”

What’s a company in your portfolio that you’re particularly proud of owning, not just because it worked out, but because it reflects your way of thinking?

One company I’m particularly proud to own is Meta Platforms (although pride in ownership can lead to poor decision-making in the future). Not just because the investment worked out financially, but because it reflects my broader investment philosophy: conviction through volatility, the willingness to be early and wrong before being proven right, and the discipline to hold through noise.

I started adding heavily to my Meta position during the drawdown in 2022 and 2023, when sentiment was profoundly pessimistic. Most of my purchases were in the $100–$180 range, and I even made some below $90, which was close to the bottom. At the time, headlines were dominated by talk of Zuck’s metaverse obsession, the TikTok Threat, Apple’s tracking changes, and runaway spending. But I saw a misunderstood asset with immense cash generation, world-class ad infrastructure, and optionality in AI and messaging. The market was focused on recent costs, while I focused on the underlying engine and long-term potential. I think with the benefit of hindsight, you were able to buy Meta at something like 4x 2Y-forward EBIT. That’s absolutely nuts and shows how irrational markets can become at times.

Importantly, I didn’t just buy at the lows. I also added back at $400, after a weaker quarter, which I think shows another layer of discipline: I didn’t anchor to my previous buys. Overcoming that kind of psychological bias is something I take real pride in. Similarly, I held through to $700, even as many around me, including respected investors, were trimming or calling to “take profits” at $200, $300, $400, and so on.

I tweeted in August 2024 that while Meta was Pat Dorsey’s most prominent position, his biggest mistake may have been selling it every single quarter since Q1 2023. If he had held, his stake would now be around 62% of his AUM. That’s not to criticize him, but to underscore how hard it is to hold a big winner through its full run. I’m proud that I did and that I didn’t outsource my conviction to the market, the headlines, or even great investors I admire.

What do you think your most significant edge is as an investor today, and how did you come to recognize it?

My most significant edge today is time arbitrage, the ability to look further ahead than most market participants. In a world obsessed with the next quarter, I focus on the next three to five years, or perhaps the next ten years.

That edge is behavioral. It stems from structuring my process, environment, and mindset in a way that enables me to remain patient when others are compelled to act. I recognized this edge by observing how often great businesses are mispriced due to short-term noise – missed quarters, shifting narratives, or misunderstood investments.

I just mentioned Meta, which is a great example. When the market panicked over near-term spending and headwinds (Meta posted one quarter without any free cash flow back then), I was buying aggressively, because I was thinking about where the business could be in 2027 or 2030, not what the next earnings call would look like. That’s not about predicting the future perfectly, but being directionally right.

I wrote about this idea in greater detail here:

Quality Investing with René Sellmann

The Equity Yield Curve: Why the Long Game Pays Better Than You Think

Most investors have a working knowledge of the bond yield curve. It's a basic concept of finance: under normal circumstances, the longer you lend your money, the more you expect to be compensated…

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a year ago · 9 likes · 2 comments · Rene

What type of business do you naturally gravitate toward, even if it’s not the most apparent winner on paper? What’s the pattern you tend to trust?

I tend to fall in love with “quiet compounders” – companies that don’t grab headlines but steadily build value through customer love, operational discipline, smart capital allocation, and long-term thinking. We’ve addressed many of these concepts already. Ideally, they might even operate in a relatively unexciting industry, increasing the chances that other investors will overlook them. So yeah, they might look boring at first glance.

However, you might question whether my current portfolio actually aligns with that fundamental belief. I’m certainly also very interested in “techy” names in disruptors. Think: AI infrastructure, specialty software, payment rails, or mission-critical logistics.

First and foremost, I am interested in reinvestment opportunities. If a company pays out 50% of its profits as a dividend, this immediately turns me off a bit. This doesn’t mean I reject the idea altogether, because if it reinvests the remaining 50% at attractive rates (or perhaps it requires very little reinvestment to grow in the first place), investors can still achieve a great outcome, especially if purchased at a low price. But fundamentally, if all else is equal, I prefer companies that can redeploy A LOT of capital at high returns.

These businesses often look “expensive” to people using the wrong lens. But once you understand the compounding mechanics, they’re actually cheap on a decade-long horizon.

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How do you protect yourself from falling in love with a company? Where’s the line between admiration and bias for you?

It starts with acknowledging that bias is inevitable. I will get attached to stories, founders, and ideas… It’s human. However, I try to systematize my way around it. First, you need to study and understand all the biases that exist. Then reflect on your own behavior. Another method is writing a “pre-mortem” for each investment: what could realistically go wrong here? Why is someone else selling his shares to you? Spend a lot of time on the bear case. That’s not a natural thing to do, and it will create discomfort. But you have to do it.

Another tool I use is external challenges. I’ve built a community of thoughtful investors who don’t hesitate to challenge my thinking. If I can’t defend the thesis against an intelligent skeptic, it’s probably time to reassess.

Finally, I’ve learned that admiration should never override accountability. If management starts allocating poorly, culture declines, or the moat erodes, I sell, no matter how much I used to love the business. Respect is earned continuously. Love is for relationships, not for stocks. Another tagline I believe in is: the more robotic you are in your decision-making, the better your investment outcomes. And robots don’t feel emotions.

What’s a belief or assumption you hold today that you’re still questioning or evolving? Something you haven’t fully resolved yet.

One belief I’m still wrestling with is how much weight to give to macroeconomic context in bottom-up investing. I’ve long subscribed to the idea that you can ignore macro and focus solely on business fundamentals. That was Buffett’s approach, and it’s echoed by many long-term investors I admire.

However, the last few years – marked by COVID shocks, rate hikes, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical shifts – have somewhat challenged that view, at least to some extent. I still believe you can’t predict macro. But I’m starting to think that you can’t completely ignore it either. Some businesses are far more sensitive to rate environments, regulatory shifts, or energy prices than their past earnings might suggest.

So now, I’m trying to strike a balance. I still prioritize microanalysis, but I also ask: “What external variables could undermine this thesis… not because the company failed, but because the world changed?” I haven’t fully resolved it, but I’m more comfortable saying: I don’t need to be a macro expert, but I also can’t afford to be blind.

What are you still trying to master or understand better when it comes to investing? Where do you feel you’re still early in your journey?

Selling. It’s deceptively hard. Entering a position feels easy to me: you’re building a thesis, you’re courageous when others are fearful, the price is just “too cheap” ... ideally, it’s so cheap that you start questioning yourself: what in the world am I missing?

Selling a stock that has done well for you, on the other hand, is really hard for me. There are once again all sorts of biases involved here, clouding your judgment.

Ian Cassel once introduced the metaphor of renting versus owning stock. I’m a strong believer in adopting a business owner's mindset when investing. Sort of counterintuitively, the beauty of public market investing is that you can exit an investment at any point in time. That’s why they often trade at a “liquidity premium” in the first place. At times, opportunistically, it makes sense to utilize that liquidity to your advantage. This is especially true when there are clearly animal spirits in the market. So you rent a quality business when it’s trading at an excellent rental yield, to stick with the metaphor. However, if the price of the home starts skyrocketing, buyers will be knocking at your door every day (Buffett’s Mr. Market), bidding prices up and up, driving the rental yield down. At some point, you should absolutely sell. You have too, fully embracing that more buyers willing to pay even more may very well show up at the door for another year, making you feel like a fool for selling too early. You have to lean into the behavioral edge that you have over competitors.

Ten years from now, if someone looks back at your body of work and your portfolio, what do you hope stands out most, not the returns, but the thinking?

I hope they say, “This person thought clearly and acted deliberately.” Not just that the portfolio compounded well, but that each decision reflected a coherent worldview. That most of the businesses I owned were not only financially sound but also philosophically aligned with long-term value creation for all stakeholders, not just shareholders (as we discussed before).

In terms of content, I want the body of work – on YouTube, X posts, Substack, podcasts – to reflect more than commentary. I want it to feel like a slow-building curriculum: not teaching “how to beat the market over 12 months” but how to think better, ask sharper questions, and build your own framework, which then will inevitably lead to a great outcome.

If someone binge-watches or binge-reads what I’ve put out and walks away thinking more clearly – not just about investing, but about life choices, opportunity cost, incentives, and trust – then I’ll consider that a win.

I also hope there’s consistency. That I didn’t veer wildly with every market cycle, but instead stuck to a few key principles (even during periods of poor performance): long-termism, quality, and curiosity. And that I did it all with a healthy mix of rigor, humility, and joy.

What advice would you give someone just starting their investing journey, based on your experience?

Start small, stay curious, find a mentor, and document everything. When you're starting out, it’s tempting to chase the next big idea or overreact to news flow. Resist that. The real edge comes from building a feedback loop. Write down every thesis, every reason for buying or selling, and revisit those notes.

Focus less on finding the perfect stock and more on developing your personal investing framework. What kind of businesses resonate with you? What risks keep you up at night? What time horizon

suits your temperament? What level of portfolio concentration can you deal with? These answers are more important than any hot tip.

It’s like finding the right diet. The best diet is one you can stick with for an extended period of time. The most expensive mistake in investing is quitting. So find a style that enables you NOT to quit.

Also, ignore the pressure to have strong opinions about everything. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know enough to invest here.” In fact, that humility will probably save you from your worst losses. And finally, seek out other thoughtful investors – not to copy them, but to sharpen your thinking. Investing doesn’t have to be a lonely experience. You’ll go further if you learn in public, ask good questions, make news friends, and never stop refining your process.

Disclaimer: The analysis presented in this blog may be flawed and/or critical information may have been overlooked. The content provided should be considered an educational resource and should not be construed as individualized investment advice, nor as a recommendation to buy or sell specific securities. I may own some of the securities discussed. The stocks, funds, and assets discussed are examples only and may not be appropriate for your individual circumstances. It is the responsibility of the reader to do their own due diligence before investing in any index fund, ETF, asset, or stock mentioned or before making any sell decisions. Also double-check if the comments made are accurate. You should always consult with a financial advisor before purchasing a specific stock and making decisions regarding your portfolio.

Quick Fire Round Questions

Most overrated investing concept and most overrated company?

Overrated concept: "Buy the dip." It’s become a meme more than a strategy. Sometimes the dip is a signal, other times, it's just a business in decline. Without a thesis, you’re not buying a dip, you’re catching a falling knife.

Overrated company: Probably some tech company with excessive stock-based compensation and a structurally broken business model. There are too many to list here.

One stock you’d hold for the next 10 years—no selling allowed?

Wise. I’m still in the process of assessing the disruption risk associated with stablecoins. I’ll write a post on this soon. However, if that risk doesn’t materialize, I believe – and hope – that Wise shareholders will do well over a multi-decade timeframe.

Morning routine or night owl research sessions—why?

I’m most productive early in the morning with a cup of coffee next to me (9-11 am is probably the sweetspot)

One book every investor should actually read cover to cover—and why?

100 Baggers by Chris Mayer. It’s simple, inspirational, and reminds you of what really matters: time, returns on capital, the “twin engines,” and the discipline to hold through noise. You can finish it in a weekend and spend the next decade trying to apply it. That’s my kind of book.

What’s your guilty pleasure outside the investing world?

I probably spend a bit too much time on Counter-Strike with a group of online friends. There’s another mentally stimulating online, 1-on-1, sort of chess-like board game I’d recommend looking into (if you’re into these kinds of things) called Summoners Wars Online. I probably play 1 or 2 matches per week.