Topic: Management Improvement and Investing

10 Questions for Jeff Bezos, time.com via Lean Manufacturing Blog

Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon.com. He really understand many quality management ideas: customer focus, long term thinking, process improvement, innovation. He also understands finance much better than most. I believe that knowledge is a large part of the reason he is not intimidated into going along with the short term thinking prevalent on Wall Street (as so many CEO’s are). His huge ownership interest in Amazon and his decision to raise large amounts of cash for Amazon (by issuing bonds) during the tech boom, don’t hurt either.

Amazon was one of the 10 companies selected in the 10 stocks for 10 years post. I created a Marketocracy portfolio to track that long term portfolio. The rules, at the time (for a Marketocracy portfolio), required more diversification so I added several stocks to the portfolio. I added positions in YHOO, MSFT, EMF, WMT, and BP. You can track the results of the Sleep Well portfolio.

You can also view results of another portfolio I have managed, through marketocracy, for several years: the Darvamore Fund. This fund is much more aggressive using the ideas of Darvas and Livermore as well as core positions that are selected for long term appreciation. Since the inception, in 2000, it has a annual rate of return 6.55% (655 basis points) higher than the S&P 500 index, as of today.