What We're Reading ~ 11/11/15

Dream Big: How the Brazilian Trio behind 3G Capital acquired AB Inbev, BK & Heinz [Correa]

10 questions to help define your investment philosophy [A Wealth of Common Sense]

A way to detect bias [Paul Graham]

What the Marines taught me about investing [WSJ]

The peril and opportunity of China [Mauldin]

Burbank's Passport says no place safe in China-led decline [Bloomberg]

Kyle Bass on China's looming banking crisis and the US economy [Fortune]

Platform Specialty Products could rebound [Barrons]

On Warren Buffett's stake in IBM [Medium]

On the focus of short-term profits [NYTimes]

How FICO became outdated [Pymnts]

Why the next sports empire will be built on eSports [Redef]

America's exurbs are booming [New Geography]

Jim Chanos Says China 'Worse Than You Think;' Reveals SolarCity Short

Noted short seller and founder of Kynikos Associates Jim Chanos recently appeared on CNBC to share his thoughts on the markets.

He mentioned that he feels that China is "worse than you think" and that "the biggest lesson over the last three months, for me anyways, is people are beginning to realize that the Chinese government is not omnipotent and omniscient."

Chanos, of course, has been a long time vocal skeptic on China's growth and property market.

Turning to the US, Chanos feels that people have gotten a bit 'complacent,' noting that markets have gone basically straight up and that's not how markets work.  He also mentioned that he's short Hewlett Packard (HPQ), Caterpillar (CAT), Shell, Chevron (CVX) and also unveiled a newly disclosed short: SolarCity (SCTY).

He called HPQ a "challenged business" and thinks it's in secular decline.  He says "in technology if you're not growing, you're in effect dying."

On CAT, he said it's a commodities supercycle problem.

On SCTY: Chanos argues the problem is that they have a residential model and it's really "a subprime financing company in effect" since they lease out solar panels.

Embedded below are clips from Chanos' interview:

On China:



On Hewlett Packard:



On SolarCity:



On Caterpillar:



For more from this short seller, be sure to also check out Jim Chanos' interview on Wall Street Week.

What We're Reading ~ 7/15/15

The Devil's Financial Dictionary [Jason Zweig]

Discovery Communications and the uncertain future of pay TV [Punch Card]

Charlie Munger's favorite life hack [Business Insider]

Profile of Pat Dorsey [Barrons]

The single most important element to successful investing [The Felder Report]

Single sentence investing philosophies [Morgan Housel]

In defense of corn, the world's most important crop [Washington Post]

A pitch on Cimpress (CMPR) [ValueConferences]

Decoding China's swoon and its impacts [Going Long]

Little known French billionaire circles US cable market [WSJ]

Drahi's American cable dream faces harsh reality [WSJ]

Netflix and the conservation of attractive profits [Stratechery]

Aldi and Lidl are ready to invade the US, beware Walmart & Target [Forbes]

Leon Black's sell-everything call has been heard by his rivals [Bloomberg]