Stock Market Investors

The phrase “majoring in the minor” refers to focusing excessively on trivial details while neglecting more important aspects of a situation. This analytical flaw is especially prevalent in today’s investment environment. Quarterly earnings often overshadow the durability of a business’s long-term competitive advantage, with growth being prioritized over profitability and the scarcity of assets. This shift towards short-term investing has been gradual, but it is more pronounced when we consider the reduction in the average stock holding period by mutual funds, which has dropped from seven years in 1960 to less than a year today. […]

We learned a long time ago that we wanted to know what smart professional investors were doing. It’s always better to know who is smart rather than being smart yourself. Therefore, we’ve constantly kept track of insider buying, what great investors like Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim were doing, and what the most successful hedge funds were up to. A recent chart stopped us in our tracks. […]

[…] Our large-cap value strategy is not the “same as it ever was,” but it looks very attractive relative to the stock-picking disciplines we compete against. We own a portfolio that is cheaper on traditional value metrics in price than the S&P 500 Index (as cheap relatively as almost any point since inception) and most value portfolios. And we show relatively stronger balance sheets and return on equity than most of our competitors. This shows “How do we work this?” We really are very similar by metrics to where we’ve always been. We feel like we have a “large automobile,” a “beautiful house,” and a “beautiful wife.” […]