📖Carl Icahn
Review Your Investment Thesis
Regularly challenge your original investment thesis.
Regularly review whether your original reasons for owning a stock still hold. If the facts change, change your mind. Holding a broken thesis is the costliest mistake.
🏠 Everyday Analogy
📖 Core Interpretation
Carl Icahn frames investing as a compounding game. Time amplifies quality and discipline, while unnecessary activity often destroys long-horizon returns.
💎 Key Insight：Adapting to new facts prevents holding broken investments.
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❓ Why It Matters
Short-term noise often forces investors out before value is realized. Long-term discipline increases the odds that fundamentals, not emotions, drive outcomes.
🎯 How to Practice
Extend research and review horizon, reduce unnecessary turnover, and adjust only when intrinsic value, risk, or opportunity cost materially changes.
⚠️ Common Pitfalls
Calling it long term while never reviewing thesis
Overtrading and damaging compounding
Ignoring opportunity cost and alternatives
📚 Case Studies
1
Netflix Stake Amid Doubts (2012)
Icahn disclosed roughly 10% stake in Netflix when Wall Street feared rising content costs and competition from Amazon and HBO.
✨ Outcome：Management later adopted a poison pill; Icahn exited much of the position with large profits as the stock multiplied over the next few years.
2
Yahoo vs. Microsoft Deal Push (2008)
Icahn bought Yahoo shares after it rejected Microsoft’s takeover bid, arguing the board had destroyed value by refusing the offer.
✨ Outcome：He waged a proxy fight, secured board seats, and eventually exited with mixed results as no full Microsoft deal materialized, but governance pressure increased.
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