The Science of Hitting

The earliest influential book that Ron read as a kid was the Science of Hitting by baseball legend Ted Williams.

One of Ted's pieces of advice in that tome is to be very careful about the swings that you choose to take.

Ron's father claims his son took this advice to heart, telling The New Yorker, 'I must have thrown half a million pitches to Ron. I think he swung at about 500 of them.'

He went after Disney like seven months ago. I know. I know. He did not learn that fucking lesson. That did not stick with you, man.

He was appealing to Williams' pride.

I want to say a huge thank you to Alex Morris who writes the investment substack "The Science of Hitting" he has two pieces that were just excellently written analyzing Costco's financials

the company has returned 80% of net income to share holders in the last decade rather than reinvesting it in growth and the key reason for this is that

the average Sam's club only generates about half the revenues of a Costco and that gap has widened over time given the unit economics of the business that's a tough hurdle to overcome which explains why Sam's club has a smaller unit base today than it did a decade ago crazy right over the same period Costco increased its US warehouse count by one third anyone who could have challenged them is just done

the average US store has 68,000 the first store in China opened in 2019 which popped to 400,000 members within two years the US at maturity is at 68,000 members China right I'm assuming our China tech episodes because I feel like every 10 minutes in those episodes we just be like China like things are of a different scale there