The Last Straw

During the week I caught up on a podcast with Howard Marks and Morgan housel — two thinkers in the financial space I greatly admire. (Shoutout to Karmast for suggesting it!) The main topic was debt, and how it narrows the range of outcomes an investor can endure. And it showed how successful investing is less about brilliance and more about […]

Reporting season is a busy and often stressful time for investors. There’s a deluge of information to digest, synthesise and (potentially) react to. And all at a time when the broader market is responding in significant, and oftentimes unexpected ways. Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be this way.  The reality is that you’re never going to […]

There’s a lot of distance between broad, abstract investing concepts and placing actual trades with your hard earned. 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy by Hamilton Helmer makes a good attempt at focusing the investor’s attention on the things that matter, and putting it in a way that feels a bit more actionable. It’s basically a book about ‘moats’, as Buffett would call them, […]

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Businesses need at least a modicum of growth to push back against the relentlessness of cost inflation. And then there are cost of capital and opportunity cost hurdles one must consider.  Furthermore, if you’re standing still, there’s a chance your competitors aren’t —  which means you’re bleeding market share and relevance. Stagnation is also a […]

I recently re-read Robert Pirsig’s classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values“. Penned in 1974, it’s a philosophical reflection on values and the art of living. I highly recommend it. What has that got to do with investing? Well, as it turns out, a lot—at least in my opinion! Here are some of the insights from […]

PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has some interesting takes, not all of which you may agree with. But he said something back in 2015 which was bang on: “I’m always sceptical of sectors and trends. People always ask me what some trends are that I see happening in the future, and I have never liked the question because I’m […]

There’s no area of the market where you’d say stock picking was ‘easy’, but some sectors tend to offer fewer challenges than others. For Luke Winchester (aka Wini), whom we spoke with last week (see below), the preferred hunting ground is in the B2B industrials space. One of the key reasons being that these types of companies tend to offer better […]

Here’s a controversial take: to score the really big wins on the share market, you should disregard much of the so-called fundamentals. Not that key financial metrics are unimportant. Things such as sales, cash flows and the structure of the balance sheet provide invaluable insights into the nature of a business — and if they reveal an entity that is viable, growing […]

An unpopular perspective is an almost unavoidable requirement if you’re hoping to find a multi-bagger. If everyone shared your insight, and saw the value you recognize, it’d already be reflected in the share price. The consensus view may be cozy, but it’ll give you little opportunity for outsized returns.  What you want is a variant perception; an important but underappreciated insight into the […]