The Last Straw

When I first started to attend company briefings, I usually came away feeling more than a little stupid. It always felt like I was accidently sat at the adults table; nodding along like an idiot and desperately hoping no one expected me to speak. While others asked probing questions on all manner of esoteric accounting adjustments and industry specifics, I […]

Every business, no matter how wonderful, has a few hairs on it. And if you don’t think that’s true, it’s only because you haven’t looked hard enough. But some hairs are, well, hairier than others.  It’s not ideal to see the CEO of one of your favourite companies sell shares right before an opportunistic capital raise, but that may be more palatable […]

There’s an old (and quite unscientific) investment principle called the ‘rule of five‘ which states that for every five stocks in your portfolio, one will significantly outperform the market, three will more or less match it, and one will…well, it’ll suck. Badly. Overall, that makes the whole business of portfolio management seem rather futile. If the end result is pretty much a wash, […]

When you’ve been around small-caps for a while, large daily moves aren’t unfamiliar. Much of the time, they’re best ignored. Shares in 8common (ASX:8CO) last month spiked by 29% in a single day after the business released an encouraging quarterly result. A nice gain, for sure, but one that was driven by less than $20k worth of trades. Shares are now back at where […]

With most companies issuing results this month, it’s a busy time for investors. And, given some of the volatility these results can induce, it’s also a period that can test your nerves. Sometimes the market’s reaction is perfectly rational. But not always, at least not in the context of how a long-term investor would appraise things. A good example lately is […]

Why is it that building or renovation cost estimates are always — and I mean always — wrong? Usually significantly so. If you’ve ever watched shows like Grand Designs, or undertaken a bit of remodelling yourself, you know this to be true. Projects that are completed on-time and on-budget are rarer than hen’s teeth. This is especially true for “nation […]

If you’re a technophile, there’s a fast expanding array of things to get excited about. Synthetic biology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing & (more recently) superconductivity are some of the more promising domains where very real progress is being made. Once in a species breakthroughs no longer feel as far fetched as they used to. And progress […]

You don’t need us to tell you that it’s been a tough run for small caps over the past year or so. And the harsh truth is that much of the pain was well deserved. Things always look clearer with the benefit of hindsight, but there was never any good justification for a bunch of sub-scale, cash-burning, undifferentiated wannabees to […]

Charlie Munger once said “show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome“.  A great example comes from 1860s, when the British contracted ship captains to transport convicts to our sunny shores. Back then, the survival rate of those poor souls was a miserable 40%. Human rights weren’t exactly a high priority, but most still felt that allowing 6 […]