Markets & Narrative
Every idea in Doomscholar on markets & narrative. Open any one to read it in layers, with its sources.
- 20 Golden Rules from Peter LynchPeter LynchAmateur investors have structural advantages over Wall Street professionals — the freedom to hold five stocks instead of five hundred, to ignore quarterly performance pressure, and to research industries they actually understand — and Lynch's rules are mostly about not squandering that edge.
- Adani Group: How the World's 3rd Richest Man Is Pulling the Largest ConHindenburg ResearchHindenburg's claim: the Adani Group engaged in stock manipulation and accounting fraud over decades. Adani denied it, and India's market regulator dismissed key allegations in 2025.
- Adapting to EndureSequoia CapitalThe era of free capital is over; founders must pivot to profitability as rates rise and multiples compress.
- Agenda-Setting TheoryMaxwell McCombs & Donald ShawMcCombs and Shaw showed media may not tell you what to think, but it decisively tells you what to think about — the correlation between media agenda and public agenda is among the most replicated findings in communication science.
- Amusing Ourselves to DeathNeil PostmanPostman argued television doesn't just carry trivial content, it makes serious content trivial by forcing it into an entertainment form — so the danger is not that we are fooled, but that we are delighted into not wanting to know.
- Blue Ocean StrategyW. Chan Kim & Renée MauborgneLasting competitive advantage comes not from beating rivals in existing markets ('red oceans') but from creating uncontested market space ('blue oceans') where competition is irrelevant.
- Bretton Woods IIIZoltan PozsarWeaponized reserves after Russia's invasion usher in a new monetary order backed by commodities, not fiat.
- Buy American. I Am.Warren BuffettAmid GFC panic, US stocks are cheap; be greedy when others are fearful.
- EBITDA, DecomposedAbir HaddoudEBITDA strips out financing structure, tax jurisdiction, and accounting depreciation choices to expose a company's core operating performance — which makes it useful for comparing companies fairly, but only if you separately track the real cash flow and capital expense risks it deliberately ignores.
- Enron Short ThesisJim Chanos / KynikosEnron's returns didn't cover its cost of capital and its accounting was opaque; the equity was worthless.
- Fooling Some of the People All of the Time (Allied Capital Short)David Einhorn / GreenlightEinhorn's claim: Allied Capital used aggressive accounting to overstate the value of its illiquid investments.
- Fractals & Self-SimilarityBenoît MandelbrotMandelbrot showed that many natural and economic patterns repeat their rough structure at every scale — a coastline looks similarly jagged whether measured in miles or inches, so 'how long is it' has no single answer without choosing a ruler.
- How to Select a Valuation MethodBojanFin.comThe correct valuation method depends jointly on a company's lifecycle stage and the purpose of the valuation — the same startup might be valued by the Berkscore method when raising funds and by a DCF when being acquired, because different purposes demand different assumptions.
- Lehman Brothers Short Thesis (Ira Sohn)David Einhorn / GreenlightLehman's balance sheet is opaque and undercapitalized; its marks on illiquid assets are not credible.
- Luckin Coffee (Anonymous Report)Muddy Waters / Carson BlockLuckin Coffee fabricated sales figures; the growth story is a fraud.
- Made to StickChip Heath & Dan HeathIdeas that persuade and spread share six identifiable traits — the SUCCESS framework — while most ideas that fail to stick lack them despite being just as true or important.
- Manufacturing ConsentNoam Chomsky & Edward HermanChomsky and Herman argued mass media pass through five filters — ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and ideology — that systematically shape which stories survive to publication without any central conspiracy needing to give orders.
- Mimetic DesireRené GirardWe don't desire things independently — we desire what other people desire, borrowing our wants from a model we consciously or unconsciously want to become.
- Mr. MarketWarren BuffettThe stock market should be viewed as a manic-depressive business partner whose daily price quotes exist entirely to serve you, not to inform or guide your estimate of a business's intrinsic value.
- Nikola: How to Parlay an Ocean of LiesHindenburg ResearchHindenburg's claim: Nikola is an 'intricate fraud' built on false claims about its technology, including a truck rolling downhill in a video.
- Principles for Navigating Big Debt CrisesRay DalioDebt crises follow a repeating, mechanical template of leveraging and deleveraging that can be navigated.
- Reinvesting When TerrifiedJeremy GranthamIn a crash the real danger is not buying too early but freezing entirely; the cure is a reinvestment plan decided in advance.
- Revenue, Profit, and Cash Are Not the Same NumberNathan Liao, CMARevenue, profit, and cash measure three different things at three different points in a transaction's lifecycle, and conflating them is the single most common misconception in reading a business's financial health.
- RIP Good TimesSequoia CapitalThe 2008 crash is structural, not cyclical; cut burn, extend runway, get to cash-flow positive.
- Sapiens: A Brief History of HumankindYuval Noah HarariHomo sapiens came to dominate the planet not through individual strength or intelligence but through a unique capacity for large-scale cooperation built on shared fictions — money, nations, religions, and corporations that exist only because enough people believe in them together.
- Scion Capital Letters (Subprime Short)Michael BurrySubprime mortgage-backed securities will collapse; buy CDS protection against the housing bubble.
- Sea ChangeHoward MarksA generational shift from falling to elevated rates ends the 40-year tailwind; credit and value are the new winners.
- Simulacra and Simulation (Hyperreality)Jean BaudrillardModern media doesn't just represent reality anymore — it produces a self-referential simulation so complete that the distinction between the real and its copy collapses entirely.
- Sino-Forest Corporation (Strong Sell)Carson Block / Muddy WatersMuddy Waters' claim: Sino-Forest overstated its timber assets, and the equity was worth a fraction of its price.
- Soft Power vs Hard PowerJoseph NyeNye distinguished hard power (coercion via force or payment) from soft power (attraction via culture, values, and policies others want to join) — and argued durable influence relies more on the second than the first.
- Thank You for ArguingJay HeinrichsAristotle's three levers of persuasion — ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic) — still explain why arguments land or fail, and knowing which one is missing from a failed pitch tells you exactly what to fix.
- The Attention MerchantsTim WuWu traces how, from the first penny press to Instagram, the business of capturing and reselling human attention has grown into the dominant engine of media — and how every attention boom triggers a backlash that resets expectations about what should be free from capture.
- The Changing World OrderRay DalioLong-term debt, currency, and empire cycles explain the relative decline of the US and rise of China.
- The Cynefin FrameworkDave SnowdenYou cannot manage a complex system the same way you manage a complicated one. You must adapt your decision-making to the domain you are in.
- The Efficient Market HypothesisEugene FamaFama formalized that in an efficient market, prices already reflect all available information of that form — weak, semi-strong, or strong — so consistently beating the market requires either private information or a risk premium, not just public analysis.
- The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve SystemLyn AldenStructural imbalances in the dollar reserve system are straining and will drive a long-term monetary shift.
- The Medium Is the MessageMarshall McLuhanThe form a communication technology takes shapes society more than the content it carries — the channel is never neutral.
- The Narrative FallacyNassim Nicholas TalebTaleb argues we compulsively compress noisy, high-variance histories into tidy causal stories — and then mistake the story's coherence for predictive power, hiding randomness where it matters most.
- The Overton WindowJoseph P. OvertonOverton proposed that at any time only a window of policies feels politically acceptable — and that serious change requires moving the window itself, not just proposing a policy inside the current one.
- The Pricing of Options and Corporate LiabilitiesFischer Black, Myron ScholesAn option can be priced by constructing a continuously rebalanced hedge, yielding a closed-form value independent of the investor's risk preferences.
- The Race to the BottomHoward MarksInvestors competing to accept ever-worse terms and lower returns are sowing the seeds of the next crisis.
- The Superinvestors of Graham-and-DoddsvilleWarren BuffettThe concentrated success of value investors from a shared intellectual 'village' refutes efficient markets.
- The World's Largest Hedge Fund Is a FraudHarry MarkopolosBernard Madoff's impossibly smooth returns are mathematically inconsistent with any real strategy; the fund is either front-running or a Ponzi scheme.
- Twenty Finance Terms Everyone ConfusesWealth (thecapitalistt0)A working financial vocabulary — knowing the precise difference between terms like liquidity and solvency, or nominal and real returns — prevents the specific category of investing mistakes that come from conflating two related but distinct concepts.
- Valeant: The Pharmaceutical Enron?Andrew Left / Citron ResearchCitron's claim: Valeant used a specialty pharmacy, Philidor, to book sales in an Enron-style scheme.
- Waiting for the Last DanceJeremy GranthamUS equities are in a full-blown epic bubble that will end badly, comparable to 1929 and 2000.
- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Herbalife Short)Bill Ackman / Pershing SquareAckman's claim: Herbalife is a pyramid scheme that regulators will shut down, and the stock is worth zero.
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