In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Danielle Town about her book Invested.

Danielle Town is a New York Times bestselling author and corporate attorney who was afraid of stock markets until she realized she had been abdicating the power of her money and could create impactful generational wealth with an investing practice. She now invests and writes her newsletter, The Invested Practice, from Zurich, Switzerland. She wrote her book, Invested, with her investor father, Phil Town, with whom she also banters about value investing and life on their podcast, InvestED.

Five Good Questions:
1. What kept you from learning about investing until you were in your mid-30s, despite having a dad who is a value investor? How did “voting with your money” draw you into learning about investing and help you overcome your fears?

2. I’ve long been fascinated by the “intangibles” of the investment process, like time management, mental and physical preparation, and environmental design. How did you curate your investment environment for success?

3. As a corporate attorney, you got a firsthand view of the asymmetry of information between what gets reported and what’s really happening in the messy world of business. How do you reconcile that in your analysis of a public company where that same asymmetry may exist?

4. Charlie Munger recently said, “If you have trouble finding good investments, join the club… my advice to the seeker of high compound interest is to reduce your expectations. Things are likely to be tough for a while.” My impression was that your dad might have piqued your interest in investing by showing you the magic of compounding returns. Do you think the returns of the last 20-30 years be available to us over the next 20-30 years?

5. How has your background in meditation helped you in investing?

And make sure you pick up your copy of the Rebel Allocator, available now on Amazon in both digital and physical formats!

In this week's Five Good Questions, we're interviewing Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall about his book Good Stocks Cheap.

Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall teaches value investing at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, and at Stanford University.  He also teaches asset management at UC Berkeley.  A longtime value investor, he wrote the book Good Stocks Cheap: Value Investing with Confidence for a Lifetime of Stock Market Outperformance.  He holds a BA in Economics from UCLA; and an MBA from Harvard.

Five Good Questions:
1.  Can you walk us through how you built your investing model?  I especially liked your ideas that organize efforts around “Know what to do,” “Do it,” and “Don’t do anything else.”
2.  Your book demonstrates a clear understanding of accounting.  Has the rise of intangibles changed how you use and interpret financial statements?
3.  There have been some great studies and white papers on reversion to the mean on returns on invested capital.  Do those influence your evaluation of strategic assessment?  Are we ever going to see profit margins mean revert again?
4.  One of the biases you identify is called “miscontrast.”  Can you explain what that is?  Do you consider yourself an absolute or relative value investor?  (It feels like a lot of the 13F ideas I’ve kicked the tires on the last few years during an expensive market suffer from this biases.)
5.  What are the ancillary, non-monetary benefits you’ve found to being an investor?

And make sure you pick up your copy of the Rebel Allocator, available now on Amazon in both digital and physical formats!

The Hikecast is a show where interesting people take me on their favorite hikes or walks and we talk about big ideas in an unconstrained format.  No planned agendas, just deep conversations, recorded out in nature.

The idea is for you to put on The Hikecast and get outside to simulate taking a hike with us.  I want you to feel like you're there with us out in nature.

Care to join us on a hike? :)

My guest for this episode is Kim House.  Kim has been an ordained Zen Buddhist Teacher since 2008. When not leading meditation and guiding students with their mindfulness practice, he works as an information technology consultant specializing in helping non-profits. Kim lives in Wisconsin in the warmer months with his wife. In the winter months Kim is often at his son and daughter-in-law's retreat center (floretreatcenter.org) in Uvita, Costa Rica. Kim helps with meditation at the many yoga and wellness retreats held at Flo.

We went on a balmy afternoon hike near Uvita, Costa Rica.

Please enjoy this hikecast with Kim House.
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Also, I'm announcing the release of my first literary effort: The Rebel Allocator

It’s a coming-of-age story of a young man who learns about business and life from an unlikely teacher. Imagine The Karate Kid meets Thorndike’s The Outsiders. You’re right, it’s probably not what you were expecting, but I have my fingers crossed that you’ll really enjoy it. It's available on amazon now in both print and digital formats.

With gratitude,
Jake