Luke Thomas

"Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Don’t forget rule No. 1." - Warren Buffett I'm in the middle of a months-long deep dive into value investing. For those unaware with this strategy, the most important thing you should know is that investors seek to identify and invest in companies that are undervalued by the market. For example, let's say I go to a yard…

I've recently been watching video interviews of Jeff Bezos on Youtube. Over the years, I've spent way too much money on Amazon, yet I've never fully realized how customer-focused they are. This might be because I've never had to email or call them with support issues, which one could argue is a result of being customer-focused :) For example, Bezos has an email inbox where customers can send him emails (you…

If you didn't see the Elon Musk/Warren Buffet back and forth over the weekend, it was a bit entertaining. To bring you up to speed, Warren Buffett is a big fan of investing in companies with long-term economic moats. What is an economic moat? This refers to a business' ability to maintain competitive advantages over its competitors in order to protect its long-term profits and market share from competing…

Over the past few months, I've spent way too much time scouring real estate listings, both in Maine and beyond. It's a common occurance to spend most of my time thinking about the mortgage payment, down payment, and renovation costs. What frequently flies under the radar is property taxes. The truth of the matter is that property taxes is an expense that you have a huge amount of control over…

Last week, my wife and I took a road trip from Portland, ME to Austin, TX. As you can imagine, we passed through quite a few cities on the way. I love exploring new places and tend to go a bit crazy with research. For fun, I will dig into population growth, housing prices, and other demographic information. I'm super interested in what factors cause an area to grow as…

Over the past several months, I've heard on several occassions that there's a lack of capital available for early stage startups in the Portland, ME area.…

This post won’t be very long as I feel strange even commenting on what great leadership looks like, but from my past experience, some of the best bosses I’ve had understand the idea of career/role fit. For decades, leaders inside an organization would hire people exclusively based on their ability to perform a routine task over and over. People would take their place as a replaceable cog…

I’ve had this conversation a few times in the past month, so I figured I’d write a quick post on my thoughts on investing. I’m using the term investing loosely, but I’m specifically referring to exerting energy or financial resources with the hope of achieving some type of positive return later in life. This post will mostly be a brain-dump of thoughts. Number #1 Rule Invest…