How We Think
These topics, which are largely excerpted from client letters dating back to our 2001 inception, provide insight into our philosophy and the key tenets that have consistently underpinned our investment approach, which has remained unchanged since our founding. These ideas and concepts are not all-encompassing but do provide a sense of “how we think” and our application of our investing philosophy.
Topic: Global
Our investment mandate and research footprint are both global in scope. This reach gives us the greatest opportunity to identify businesses that meet our investment criteria. This approach helps ensure we invest only in our best ideas.
Cook & Bynum as a “Conglomerate”: Bottlers, Broadband, Brewers, & Berkshire
One way we think about the Fund’s portfolio is as a conglomerate comprised of eight carefully selected companies that are organized into five principal divisions with significant operations on five continents: (1) a geographically diversified bottler, (2) a leading telecom…
Read More
Covid-19’s Economic Impact
The global economic impact of COVID-19 has been stunning. The resulting trillions of dollars of lost wealth will be borne by many, with some of the immediate impacts obvious while the longer-term, second-order effects are less clear. Just in the…
Read More
No, Not Now, Too Hard, or Never
The portfolio update sections of our letters almost invariably share only the buy and sell decisions that we do make, rather than the ones that we do not. Meanwhile, we spend most of our time evaluating investment opportunities that we…
Read More
Where We Are Looking For Value
Previously, we shared the year-to-date results for several international indices and discussed how short-term volatility creates opportunities that we work to exploit. Longer-term returns for this group of indices are even more interesting. This chart shows their performance against the…
Read More
The Mystery of the Missing Goods
A Brief Introduction to Price Controls: Consumers see the price of a good as an expense and therefore price increases as a burden. Producers see prices as income and therefore price reductions as a threat. This healthy tension between buyers…
Read More
Recency Bias, Global Interest Rates, and Return Expectations
Evolution has rewarded humans (and animals in general) for recency bias. For example, if one of our ancestors found food down a certain path one day, that was probably a good place for him to look again the next day. …
Read More
Expanding Our Geographic Circle of Competence
We were able to spend a great deal of quality time with many levels of management in one of our core holdings and to get a much better understanding of what is actually happening on the ground. This company’s management…
Read More