Ellenbogen began work on a six-month study of media, an industry he knew little about. The goal was to compress 20 years of history into four A4 pages. The work led him to two conclusions. First, cable networks were the only exceptional businesses in media. Second, the closed system that made them exceptional was ending. The broadband... See more

Harvey’s investment illustrated what Ellenbogen had discovered in the archives. But his research also revealed that LaPorte, his investing mentor and idol, had sold Harvey’s stake in Walmart. Had LaPorte kept it and let it compound, that single position would have been worth more than the entire $8 billion Ellenbogen was inheriting. In other words,... See more

Of everything and everyone Ellenbogen experienced that summer, what stayed with him was a 20-second conversation. He’s forgotten which deal, but he remembers someone on the team calling a trade correctly, the stock moved as predicted, and at the end of the day, he walked over to ask about it.

“Henry, you realize what we are here?” the trader said.... See more

The trick was in distinguishing between a company failing and a company transitioning, then having the conviction to hold through the difference.

“The best investors are the ones who collect patterns,” she said. “It takes a long time to build those patterns. The extent to which you can accelerate how quickly you build those patterns, the better investor you’ll be. By the time I met him, he’d amassed a set of patterns that no one else had.”

Every morning at first light, he walked the course alone with a caddy. “I was so bad I didn’t want to bother anyone else,” he told me. He bought balls by the dozen from Costco, hemorrhaging them into water hazards and woods.

Between rounds, he read.

T. Rowe Price had given him the archives of all 50 New Horizons shareholder letters. Ellenbogen was... See more

At the Goldman Sachs internet conference in Las Vegas in the early 2000s, Ellenbogen met with another business no one else wanted to visit. Priceline.com had set up a meeting room for one-on-ones, in which CFO Bob Mylod and CEO Jeff Boyd sat alone. Their stock had gone from a $23 billion market capitalization when Meeker included them among the... See more

The work was interesting. The people were brilliant. But it was zero-sum. Someone wins, someone loses, money moves. What pulled at him was different. He kept thinking about the business owners he’d known in Florida and Washington, people trying to solve problems for customers, building something that could endure.

“I used to have lunch with Jeff Bezos twice a year,” Ellenbogen said. “I learned so much from those meetings. But no-one would come with me.”

The trip to Seattle took six hours from Baltimore. Amazon’s share price had fallen more than 90% from its bubble peak and despite Mary Meeker’s proclamation that it was one of the “Big Five” alongside Yahoo,... See more