Founder, Steady Compounding. Author, The Lunch Break Investor. Businesses strong enough to do the heavy lifting, so I can get on with living.
Joined October 2020
- Tweets22.3K
- Following449
- Followers83.5K
- Likes30.8K
Thomas Chua retweeted
Netflix fired its content chief and its film chief within a week.
Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg on what pushed Ted Sarandos to act:
Talent retention
• Bela Bajaria hired Dan Lin in 2024 because she felt Scott Stuber made too many movies and spent too much.
Shaw: "Stuber doesn't like to say the word no. Lin has no such issue."
• Lin passed on projects from Steven Spielberg and Peter Chernin. The Duffer Brothers, Shawn Levy and Noah Baumbach took their deals elsewhere.
Engagement
• The average member is watching on fewer days a month, and for less time.
• 16 Emmys this year, down from 30 last year.
• The US is the weak spot, and US hits are the ones that travel.
Lin's discipline helped margins. It also perhaps cost Netflix talent.
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
A few notes from readers since the book came out.
ALT A packed room at Kinokuniya Singapore for The Lunch Break Investor book talk, readers standing between the bookshelves and seated in front, one holding a microphone. Text: The Lunch Break Investor. Since August, readers have been telling me what they think.
ALT Thomas Chua signing copies at Kinokuniya Singapore while the queue waits behind a START OF QUEUE sign. Quote: “Worth your time. Easy to read through. Practical.” Yorrin van der Graaf, Fluent in Quality.
The Lunch Break Investor: steadycompounding.com/book
ALT Thomas Chua laughing at the Book Bar talk in Singapore, beside the banner with Chin Hui Leong’s cover quote. Text: Thank you for reading. The Lunch Break Investor. #1 Straits Times bestseller. steadycompounding.com/book.
Netflix fired its content chief and its film chief within a week.
Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg on what pushed Ted Sarandos to act:
Talent retention
• Bela Bajaria hired Dan Lin in 2024 because she felt Scott Stuber made too many movies and spent too much.
Shaw: "Stuber doesn't like to say the word no. Lin has no such issue."
• Lin passed on projects from Steven Spielberg and Peter Chernin. The Duffer Brothers, Shawn Levy and Noah Baumbach took their deals elsewhere.
Engagement
• The average member is watching on fewer days a month, and for less time.
• 16 Emmys this year, down from 30 last year.
• The US is the weak spot, and US hits are the ones that travel.
Lin's discipline helped margins. It also perhaps cost Netflix talent.
bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
The first thing I'm watching: who Peter Rice hires to run film.
My Q3 breakdown: steadycompounding.com/invest…
Some key takeaways from William Green's conversation with Howard Marks:
- Marks draws a direct comparison between today’s AI boom and the 1999–2000 dot-com bubble. Both are driven by a novel technology that fires the imagination and lets investors envision "trees growing to the sky."
- Innovation ≠ profitability. AI-driven cost savings may simply be competed away, with the value passed on to consumers.
- AI capabilities are obvious, but exactly how they translate into sustainable, profitable business models remains hazy.
- Don’t assume today’s early AI leaders are guaranteed to be tomorrow’s winners.
youtube.com/watch?v=UC6XCGsj…
OpenAI ramping up its ad team with hires from Meta and Google.
From The Information:
"The senior ranks are sprinkled with former salespeople from Meta and its competitors, such as Vijaye Raji, who spent 10 years at Meta before becoming chief technology officer of OpenAI applications a year ago. Mitch Pilar, a 12-year Google veteran, and Andy Sinn, who spent about a decade at Meta, joined in July to sell ads to brands and agencies in Australia and New Zealand. And in late September, Mark Bambury, who spent a dozen years at Roblox and X, became OpenAI’s head of ads for Europe, the Middle East and Africa."
Netflix says US churn improved this quarter.
So why swap its chief content officer five days before earnings?
My read on Netflix Q3, and what would change my mind: steadycompounding.com/invest…
Thomas Chua retweeted
【Selling Well!】
「The Lunch Break Investor: Identify winning stocks, build your wealth, and reclaim your time」
Author：Chua, Thomas
Publisher：Harriman House
Publication date：August 18, 2026
amazon.com/dp/1804091510?tag…
Whenever a company buys back shares, it puts a positive spin on it.
"We returned a record amount to shareholders."
That says nothing about whether the buyback was accretive or value-destroying. A lot of that depends on the price.
Many management teams make the same mistake as individual investors. They buy back shares while the stock is rising and freeze when it falls. But the discounts usually only show up when things are bad.
Buffett saw the same pattern in his 1999 letter.
In the mid-1970s, when buybacks made obvious sense, he wrote that it was "virtually screaming at managements, but few responded."
By 1999, near the dot-com peak, everyone was doing them.
berkshirehathaway.com/letter…
A lot of people wonder what financial independence actually is, or whether there's a rule of thumb for it.
I think JL Collins has a pretty interesting way of looking at it. It's not just the size of your portfolio. It's also how much you spend, and whether your portfolio can grow faster than that spending after inflation.
"One of the beauties of being financially independent is that by definition, you have enough money such that the power of compounding is greater than the opportunity cost of what you spend. Once you have your F-You Money, all you need do is make sure you continue to reinvest to outpace inflation and keep your spending below the level your stash can replenish."
JL Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth