every so often, for a fleeting moment, through an inconspicuous tweet here or a simple reply there, the heart and soul of this website is evidenced to still be alive and well
I told a guy at a barbecue last weekend that I had been buying busted small-cap software stocks at 4x free cash flow, and he looked at me with the specific facial expression of a man who has just realized he is trapped in a conversation with someone who voluntarily reads 10-Ks on vacation. He asked, with great gentleness, if I had considered Nvidia. I said I had considered Nvidia in the way one considers jumping off a bridge: briefly, theoretically, and with a clear understanding of the outcome.
I told him I owned a company that sells dental practice management software to 11,000 orthodontists and that the CEO, a 64-year-old man named Greg who has not updated his LinkedIn since 2017, was, in my professional opinion, the single greatest capital allocator alive in North America today, and that I would, if legally permitted, have Greg’s name tattooed on my forearm.
He asked if Greg knew this. I said Greg did not know I existed, and that this was the foundation of our relationship and the source of its strength. He excused himself to go check on his children, who, I observed, were not present at the barbecue. I stood by the grill alone for the next 40 minutes, eating directly from a bag of buns, thinking about Greg, who at that exact moment was, somewhere in suburban Indianapolis, almost certainly buying back stock at prices that will, in 2031, be regarded as the single greatest gift any small-cap CEO has ever given his shareholders, and the host’s wife came over and asked, with palpable concern, if I needed a ride home, and I said no, I needed nothing, I had Greg, and Greg was enough, and I have not been invited back to that house, and I do not care, because Greg loves me even though Greg does not know I am alive, and the math, as it has always been in every great deep value trade in history, is the only thing in this country that has not lied to me.