It’s a blog.
It’s educational.
It’s hopefully entertaining.
It’s not investment advice.
I write about how to think about investing for value.
Extinction
What does paleontology say about digging for investments? How long does it take businesses to go extinct, anyway? How to find opportunities parsing dying companies from thriving ones.
Break the Cycle
Will memory makers continue to traumatize investors? Has AI resolved the boom and bust cycle that’s stalked the memory market? How to take the shift from a cyclical market to a more stable one.
2025: What Did You Expect?
Some things Lamplighter got right in 2024. Some things it got wrong. What might come in 2025. A reminder of how little we know about the future and how to make that work.
Face Plant
When will you ever learn? What did you mess up this time? What lessons to take from losses and how to use them.
Fire-roasted Returns
What’s the recipe to rescue a flagging business? Can a low-margin, low-growth business offer a decent return? How to evaluate boring businesses.
Origin Story
What came first: the product or the customer? Where do customers come from anyway? How businesses organize and how that can deliver value to investors.
Hard Landing
What’s more successful: air travel regulation or consumer regulation? What does that say about the safety of an investment? How investors can adapt to changing regulatory environments.
Bon Voyage
Can a business with limited production be a good investment? Can inefficiency be turned into a profit? How to think about prestige as an opportunity.
Language Arts
Is this deal so sigma? Or is it Ohio? What do the kids have to say about M&A? How to evaluate an acquisition.
Saucy
What kind of sauce goes complements an investment? How to reduce investment problems to improve decision making.
Mail It In
What's the right hat to wear as an investor? How much is a hat worth anyway? How to evaluate the price of convenience or inconvenience as an investment opportunity.
Olé
Does everyone win in a bull fight? What do bull fights and bull markets have in common? How to avoid losing in a bull market.
Time Piece
What does the life of a phone tell us about investing? How long should investments take anyway? How different timeframes can turn up investment opportunities.
The Customer is Always Right
Is the customer always right? What do customers tell us about the value of a business. How to listen to customer behavior to evaluate an investment.
Alternative Route
How does dental hygiene influence deals? What itch do mergers and acquisitions scratch anyway? How to think about deals that don’t work on paper.
The Treachery of Profit
How did the surrealist movement in the early 20th century influence modern accounting? Why does counting bits and pieces matter? How to find an economic profit from an accounting one.
Reasonable Demands
Can companies boost demand for their shares outside of just running the company? How should companies interact with the softer sides of stockholder demand? How to sort management who are stockholder’s partners from pirates.
Copy Cat
How do banks make money? Could they make more doing the same things but not be a bank? How to evaluate opportunity in financial companies that aren’t banks.
Is It Cake?
What makes a good illusion cake? What do illusion cakes have to do with investing? How to think about companies that lose money as investments.
Loose Threads
What’s the return policy when your handbag starts unravelling? Do you get the same policy under with a merger agreement? How to look at a merger opportunity when it looks dicey if it goes through and even dicier if it doesn’t.