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.
Keep these, don't just read them
The app brings each idea back just before you'd forget it, with a quiet daily reminder.