The Last Straw

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 […]

I was fortunate enough to join Luke Winchester (aka Wini) from Merewether Capital on Ausbiz last week, and he made a rather good point. Well, he made many, but the following stood out to me. To paraphrase: “If you can’t easily figure out exactly what a business does, it’s usually best to move on.” It’s a good heuristic. Right up there […]

Tennis legend Roger Federer recently delivered the commencement address at Dartmouth university, and it’s well worth a watch. He is, as always, a class act. Roger isn’t exactly known for his investing prowess, although let it be noted he has had considerable success on that front. Over the years he earned around $130 million in prize money, but the majority […]

We all like to attribute our winners to our foresight and cunning. The losers? Well, they were the result of bad luck. The truth, of course, is that random chance — both good and bad — plays a scarily big part in shaping our investment outcomes. That’s not to say it’s all just a roll of the proverbial dice, but it pays […]