As always, I’m stoked to be able to bring you content from one of my favorite investors, Chris DeMuth Jr. Chris took the time to prepare up-to-the-minute thoughts for Fringe Finance subscribers this week.
I enjoy reading Chris as much as I love publishing him. Chris founded event driven hedge fund Rangeley Capital as well as Action this Day, a new research service launched in January 2025.
Chris also writes the Vale Tudo Substack, which can be found here and the Sifting the World Special Purpose Research Substack, which can be found here.
Chris is one of the smartest people I’ve had the chance to meet during my time as an investor. He was one of the first people to ever to be nice to me when I got my start writing on companies more than a decade ago. His acumen is widely respected by many people whose work I admire and follow - and by me.
All information contained herein is opinion only of Chris DeMuth & does not constitute investment recommendations. Nothing is a solicitation to buy or sell securities.
Easy Way v. Hard Way
“What would this look like if it were easy?” is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process. But what happens if we frame things in terms of elegance instead of strain? Sometimes, we find incredible results with ease instead of stress. Sometimes, we “solve” the problem by completely reframing it.
- Tim Ferriss
In two of my favorite investments, there are comps that show me what life would look like if it were easy. In both cases, there’s a smaller competitor that could meaningfully close the gap in market caps this year with competitors that make it look easy. Here they are…