Siren Song Capital

Oliver Thompson

July 12, 2025

A No-Called-Strikes Game

Is this a baseball post? I’m sorry to disappoint anyone who opened this expecting to find batting tips, but no, this website is about value investing. The baseball connection comes from an analogy shared by Warren Buffett which has stuck with me for many years. It goes like this: Ted Williams, the famed Red Sox slugger, wrote a book in 1971 titled The Science of Hitting in which he broke down the strike zone into 77 different cells. He calculated his batting average in each of these sections which allowed him to be selective and only swing at pitches with high probabilities of success. As helpful as this was, he couldn’t stand there all day watching pitch after pitch go by until one was thrown in the exact right spot. But I can.

I visualize the stock market as a pitcher throwing me business after business, and if there is nothing that interests me I can simply wait for a better pitch. Investing is a no-called-strikes game. Like Ted Williams, I attempt to be extremely selective about which pitches I swing at. I’ve also broken the market down into sections, allowing me to stay within my personal strike zone known as my “circle of competence.” Within this circle lie businesses I can understand and whose intrinsic value I can reasonably estimate. There are many public companies that I believe would be a fool’s errand to value, so I avoid them. This method of investing, by default, leaves me with a relatively concentrated portfolio of securities. It can also lead to periods where I am accumulating cash in an expensive market. Howard Marks describes this environment as “too much capital chasing too few assets.”

I started this website in the hopes of connecting with other value investors that may find it useful or insightful. It also serves as a place to share everything I’ve found personally useful in my investing journey in the hopes of helping others. This site will never require a paid subscription, and I have no intention of attempting to monetize it. Value investing is a lonely pursuit and no one in my life shares my interest in finance or wants to hear me drone on about reinvestment rates and the like. Here I will share my approach, research process, and ideas, both to organize my thinking and deepen my understanding of businesses I study. With this blog, I intend to create a time-stamped track record of how I think and allocate capital. Writing publicly is a form of accountability and helps to create and refine a repeatable investment process. My ultimate goal is to open my own small firm one day and be privileged enough to manage money for others. Before that can happen, I plan to work as an analyst at one of the capital management firms in my hometown. Having a finance-related blog can help show a potential future employer that I take this endeavor seriously.

A little about me, if anyone is still reading this far, or cares. I have been interested in finance and markets since I was 21 (over a decade ago). I have my grandfather to thank for this and also owe a debt of gratitude to Jack Bogle for writing helpful books that started me on the right path in index funds and away from expensive, high-turnover funds designed to earn profits for their managers at the expense of shareholders. As I continued to read and study, value investing grabbed hold of me and hasn’t let go. It makes intuitive sense to me that the function of any investment’s return is entirely dependent on the initial price paid.

I am employed full time as the general manager of an engineering company while diligently working to earn degrees in both finance and accounting. I also have a passion for fitness, specifically kickboxing, running, and lifting. The rest of my free time, what little currently exists, is spent reading 10-K’s and studying businesses. Investing is a challenging intellectual pursuit and one I have a profound interest in. Thanks for reading. I hope this website proves useful to you.