Category: Missives

[…] While we are not claiming to be getting our oil companies for birdfeed, it brings up the idea of distraction for the Sunday family in the movie and investors now. The Sundays had strangers show up looking to hunt quail, not knowing they were looking for oil. Outside of one family member believing there was a rue, they were willing parties when the sale price was negotiated at what looked like low prices in the movie. These people had never seen oil drilled on their land, thus didn’t understand the opportunity that lied ahead. […]

The goal of our work is to avoid getting stuck as fashion disappears. We have no urge for getting beat up by our companies suffering from civil law moving against them. We enjoy using these divine laws to run our portfolios. Thanks to John Locke, we hope to avoid stock market failure.

The goal of our work is to avoid getting stuck as fashion disappears. We have no urge for getting beat up by our companies suffering from civil law moving against them. We enjoy using these divine laws to run our portfolios. Thanks to John Locke, we hope to avoid stock market failure.

These young investors have adopted certain mantras. Maybe none more famous than the term HODL. HODL is short for hold on for dear life. What is striking to us is that, while the term is well-founded, they know that to create a large net worth you must hold a position for a very long time. This increases your net worth, while keeping the government away from taxing your unrealized capital gains. In effect, you just hold on as long as you can.

Most millennials have never seen an era where value has done well. The last 12 months seem like an aberration in their careers relative to the booming growth markets of the 2010’s. The investors that have witnessed value do well time and time again are more than likely baby boomers, not to count Charlie and Warren out (we never do). However, the silent generation is fewer by the day, though they have seen the tug-of-war in the value-versus-growth continuum more than future generations.

We have been long-term owners of Amgen (AMGN), Merck (MRK) and Pfizer (PFE) among the major pharma/biotech companies. We believe they trade at a ridiculous discount to similar companies in other industries. However, we think we understand why they were underperforming similar stocks and it was a self-inflicted wound. The industry allowed the media to define them as drug companies.

Today’s housing market has done what few people expected and yet, like Rodney, “it don’t get no respect.” Many on Wall Street fear the future of this industry as we’ve risen to levels of homebuilding that we haven’t seen in a long time. Rather than looking at demographics, household financials and other data that points to a very bright future, they just call it crazy. They feel it’s a sugar-high phenomenon. Lastly, they think 50% higher homebuilding from here in the future is impossible. We will look at the data to explain that, as Rodney would say, there is no respect.

Now that investors are reconsidering active stock picking and are especially interested in value stock strategies, let’s analyze where excess stock market returns come from. Excess return, or alpha, comes in four basic ways. Alpha can come from stock selection, selection timing, concentration and long holding periods.

As Amazon prepares to buy MGM Studios and announced an effort to put pharmaceutical stores all over the U.S., we are reminded of one of my favorite comedy movies, Silent Movie. Mel Brooks produced this movie as the third in a trilogy of comedies including Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

My recent reads have been stuck in the 1960’s, including Adam Smith’s The Money Game and Andrew Knowton’s Shaking the Money Tree. Both are fascinating reads into the psychology of the 1960’s. They are not looking back like John Brooks’s The Go-Go Years (a good read as well), but instead share with the readers exactly what investors were thinking at the time. The 1960’s didn’t set up investors for the decade they thought they would get. Instead, it gave them the 1970’s. The success ahead was an illusion in stock returns, not corporate growth. I’d like to use this piece to look at some of the illusions that will stalk investors and produce stock market failure in the next decade.