**Dear Reader, I hope you enjoy this article. - Vitaliy**
Oil is by my father, Naum Katsenelson
Life - Edition 2017
This article will be quite different from my previous ones. I am not
going to talk about the stock market, particular stocks, the economy, or
the new president. Instead I'll talk about life.
If the following is of no interest to you, no worries, skip this one. I
promise you I'll discuss the regular stuff in future emails, but in
this one I just want to let myself wander into topics that somehow seem
more important to me right now.
Several quotes I read recently had a disproportionate impact on me.
Here's the first one:
"What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you
bring to the New Year." - Vern McLellan
That one sent me on a rollercoaster ride of new year's resolutions.
Some are personal, some business-related. One was about health. I
decided that I want to eat better in 2017. I do not want to go on a
"diet," which to me means eating things you don't like and feeling
hungry. Some people can do that, and most, including me, can do it for a
week or two and then give up. For a diet to be permanent I have to enjoy
it. As my friend Ethan Berg puts, it has to be EFA - easy, fun,
automatic.
Ethan has been trying to convince me to do smoothies for years now, and
I wish I had listened to him sooner. I have discovered that I love to
drink smoothies, and most importantly, I love to make them.
The difficulty in making smoothies is having consistent availability of
ingredients. We don't go grocery shopping every day, and fresh fruits
and vegetables spoil. I overcame this problem by freezing portion of
fruits and veggies. I peel bananas, cut them in half and freeze them. We
visit Costco every two weeks or so, I buy a few bags of frozen
blueberries, spinach, and kale. I take about two thirds of the spinach
and kale (after I cut the kale into smaller pieces) and freeze it in
ziplock bags.
I started my smoothie adventure with smoothies for breakfast. However, a
few days later I came to the realization that breakfast is my favorite
meal of the day (I love eggs) and I didn't want to give it up. In
addition, I only consume a few hundred calories for breakfast, and I
actually enjoy cooking eggs.
Lunch is my least favorite meal for several reasons. First, it
interrupts my workflow. I have to stop my research and start thinking
about where I am going to eat. (The fewer unimportant decisions I have
to make, the better. If my wife would let me, I'd buy ten identical
sets of clothes and wear the same thing every day. Albert Einstein and
Steve Jobs did that.) Also, I consume too many calories at lunch, and in
all honesty, my lunch food choices are not very healthy. Therefore,
instead of replacing breakfast with a smoothie I have it for lunch.
When I started, my smoothies were mostly fruit-only concoctions.
Gradually I started throwing in vegetables - spinach, kale, tomatoes,
avocados, celery, and other defenseless veggies I found lurking in the
fridge. I was surprised at how, even though I was adding more and more
vegetables, my smoothies still tasted fruity. I give credit to my core
ingredients: blueberries, bananas, tangerines (which are sweeter than
oranges), and a healthy fistful of almonds (important for keeping me
topped up energy-wise for five or six hours) and honey.
The blender is the key tool in this process. I found that traditional
blenders are too klunky and messy, and instead I am using the
NutriBullet - it's compact and easy to clean. I make my smoothie
first thing in the morning at home, pour it into a jar, and take it to
work, where I stick it in the fridge. Then I enjoy a liquid salad of
fruits and lots of veggies for lunch!
I don't cook much, but now I understand why people enjoying cooking:
it gives them a sense of accomplishment. I get that feeling every
sunrise: I have created something I am proud of. (Yes, I am acutely
aware that I am talking about mixing fruits and vegetables in a
blender.)
Starting your morning right is very important. I stopped listening to
news in the morning on my way to work as it usually irritated me
(especially during election season). Instead, I now listen to podcasts.
Three podcasts I recommend are
**Masters in Business** with Barry Ritholtz,
**The Tim Ferris Show,** and
**Full Disclosure** with Roben Farzad. Roben had the poor taste to
interview me last year, but other than that he is one of the most
talented hosts I've encountered in a long time - he's very witty.
I drive my fifteen-year-old son, Jonah, to school, so we listen to these
podcasts together at 1.5x speed.
**Do what you love**
I just finished reading Tim Ferris' latest book,
**Tools of Titans.** I highly recommend it. Tim has interviewed over 200
successful people over the last few years, and this book is his
CliffsNotes of those interviews. A quote from this book has had an
amazing impact on me. One of the guests was asked, "What is the ultimate
quantification of success?" He answered, "For me, it's not how much
time you spend doing what you love. It's how little time you spend
doing what you hate."
When I read this I set a new goal for 2017: Spend as much time as
possible doing what you love and as little time doing what you hate (or
what you don't care about). You can apply this to different parts of
your life. For instance, at work I love doing research, building models,
reading, and writing. But there are other tasks that slowly creep in,
especially if you are running the business. I started examining my day
and identifying tasks that I want to minimize. Then I started
outsourcing them to others - I even hired a virtual assistant.
**Kids**
My biggest fear in life is that I won't be a good parent. Therefore, I
try to spend as much time as I can with my kids. That isn't always
easy for me because I get sucked into (addicted to) work, and it's
hard to pull out. In the winter, though, our skiing trips bring us
really close. It's a two-hour drive each way to Vail (please don't
feel sorry for me), and there's time on the lift. I kind of hate to
admit this, but my kids are better skiers than me.
Hannah, who just turned 11, can ski any terrain. I am still struggling
in powder.
Hannah has been skiing exactly 8 years, almost to the day. She skied for
the fist time on the day of Obama's first inauguration. Not to break
the tradition, my youngest daughter, Mia Sarah, who turned 3 on January
11, skied for the first time this week - the week of Trump's
inauguration. Little kids on skies are incredibly adorable. Their helmet
is a third of their size - they look like little aliens. Here's Mia
Sarah holding her first ski pass:
As I was teaching Mia Sarah to ski, I was remembering little Hannah
skiing eight years ago - she had absolutely no fear, none. Her
brother, Jonah, who was seven at the time, was completely consumed by
fear; it took him three days to get down the bunny slope. Hannah just
went straight down on the first try. She only had one speed: forward!
Skiing ended up being one of the most important things we did for Jonah.
It helped him to conquer his fears, taught him to believe in himself,
and helped him to become a very good athlete.
**Grandparents**
One day last week my wife, kids, and I visited both sets of
grandparents, and I realized how lucky my kids are. I probably saw my
grandparents only about a dozen times. I never saw my mother's and
father's parents at the same time. They lived in different cities
(Saratov and Moscow), and we saw them only in the summer, a few weeks a
year. My kids see my father several times a week. My father teaches
Hannah to paint and helps Jonah with Algebra.
I stop by a few times a week for breakfast. My stepmother makes me eggs,
my father makes coffee. I smile just writing this. My father is very
proud of his coffee. He diligently takes two and a half scoops of beans.
Grinds them. Puts them in a French press. Then, in a nearly religious
ceremony, he stirs clockwise (only clockwise), counting to 100 out loud.
Not 99 or 101, 100! Every time we watch him do this, my stepmother and I
laugh. My father jokes that if he stirs counterclockwise the coffee will
be bitter.
After my father is done with coffee, he takes out his medicine pouch. He
is 83 and in good health - he swims 25 pool length three times a week.
But his medicine pouch is like a mini Walgreens. My father says in
English, "Okay, today is... [he pauses] MonDAY" (with significant
emphasis on the word
**day).** He smiles, empties his medicine onto a plate, and starts
dutifully swallowing it. On its own the amount of medicine he consumes
should count as a meal. (As I write I feel a bit better about our
portfolio, which has a lot of drug stocks). My father takes this very
mundane task and turns it into a lively, funny experience that brings
smiles to everyone around him.
Nassim Taleb wrote that traditions are the melody of life. I get it:
they create continuity, stability. We start to look forward to them.
As I get older I appreciate traditions more and more. I have even
started developing little, somewhat silly, traditions of my own. Every
Friday after work I stop by a Russian store on the way home. I left
Russia twenty-five years ago. I now speak, read, and write much better
in English than in Russian. I am very removed from Russian culture and
Russian community. Most of my friends are American. I don't consider
myself Russian, but American. But still, every Friday I go to the
Russian store and buy Russian bread. It must be nostalgia. Not nostalgia
for Mother Russia but for my youth, for the time when my mother was in
my life.
http://ima142.acemlnb.com/lt.php?s=d3a86c5bf25e4b6449b942f14ab85ca9&i=123A138A4A1026
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Last year was a year of Camille Saint Saens and Franz Schubert for me. I
have a much greater appreciation of their music today than I did a year
ago. I've written a lot about Schubert (read it here
). Today I
want to zoom in on Saint Saens. After I wrote about his piano
concertos (read it here
), a
reader suggested I listen to Saint Saens' Symphony No. 3, also known
as the Organ Symphony. Thank you! I cannot stop listening to it.
This is not so much a symphony for organ as a symphony for two
orchestras - a traditional orchestra and organ. The organ has so
much gravitas and its sound is so rich and powerful that it can be
construed as an orchestra. The organ in this symphony adds an
unexpected (at least for me) depth to the sound and amplifies emotions
created by the main orchestra. Saint Saens wrote about this
symphony, "I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here
accomplished, I will never achieve again." He dedicated it to his
friend Franz Liszt.
Click here to listen
**Vitaliy Katsenelson, CFA**
Student of Life
I am the CEO at Investment Management Associates
, which is anything but your average
investment firm. (Seriously, take a look .)
I wrote two books on investing, which were
published by John Wiley & Sons and have been translated into eight
languages. (Even in Polish!)
In a brief moment of senility,
**Forbes** magazine called me "the new Benjamin Graham." (They must have
been impressed by the eloquence of the Polish translation.)
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