Sales Desk – US   877.701.2883
Sales Desk – International   +353 1 525 9677

US INVESTORS
Non-US INVESTORS

Sales Desk – US   877.701.2883
Sales Desk – International   +353 1 525 9677

US INVESTORS
Non-US INVESTORS

Category: Missives

David (Active Management) vs. Goliath (Passive Indexes)

Malcolm Gladwell is a fantastic writer and his new book, David and Goliath, got us thinking about his current thesis: David as a poster child for underdogs is a mistake. Gladwell contends that David had significant advantages over Goliath. In true Gladwellian form, he incorporates a myriad of disciplines to defend his thesis. And in true Smeadwellian fashion, we would like to add stock picking to the list of disciplines that strengthen Gladwell’s argument.

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January 7, 2014

The Thermometer of the Stock Market

As long-duration owners of common stock, we believe it is the wealth created by the businesses which causes the owners to prosper. We have also been participants in the US stock market since 1980 and are very aware of big swings in enthusiasm for owning common stocks. So we thought it would be helpful to share our opinion on the current temperature of the market. To take the temperature of the market we need to examine the thermometer readings.

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October 29, 2013

Frustrating the Most People

A venerable sage once said, “The markets do whatever they have to do to frustrate the most people.” For the long-duration investor, this means that you need to look at what people are invested in to determine where the frustration will come from. Thanks to the Associated Press, we know what the masses have done with their investments in the last five years:

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October 9, 2013

The Death Knell of the Global Synchronized Trade

At Smead Capital Management, we believe the interest on September 18th in emerging markets, oil and gold are the last gasps of a dying trend. Our discipline demands that you must avoid popular investments and completely avoid investments attached to a perceived “new era.” We argue that the international investment markets reaction to Bernanke’s reprieve on September 18th is proof of a vision we have of the future. We believe that the easy money policies practiced by the Fed have both laid the groundwork for the US to rebound and have simultaneously allowed a dramatically over-cooked trend to continue long after it should have ended. We believe that our easy money in the US has allowed the day of reckoning for the “global synchronized trade” to be pushed back in the same way that the Y2k rollover date elongated the tech bubble in 1999-2000.

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October 1, 2013

Dow Changes as a Contrary Indicator

The folks who select the companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) came out with their latest changes on Monday, September 9, 2013. They removed Bank of America (BAC), Hewlett Packard (HPQ) and Alcoa (AA) from the DJIA. Added to the index were Visa (V), Nike (NKE) and Goldman Sachs (GS). At Smead Capital Management, we are always looking for important psychological clues to human behavior as it pertains to the popularity of common stocks.

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September 17, 2013

Oil Has Too Many Plumbers

We’ve never quite understood why most sensible people don’t apply the same economic logic to investing that they do to any other business. Take plumbing for example. If your town has 10 main plumbing companies and 10 more move into town, your economic mind tells you that the added competition will drive down profits. On the other hand, if five of the plumbing companies go out of business, profits should rise over time.

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September 10, 2013

Exponential Business Success

At a major conference in November of 2012, the futurist, Peter Diamandis, shared the concept behind his book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Diamandis, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Medical School, has been a thought leader in everything from space travel (International Space University and X Prize Foundation) to the Internet. His concept is simple. He believes that participants in the US economy and US stock market are drastically underestimating the exponential success which comes from the unlimited impact of the Internet and technology.

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September 4, 2013

Forrest Gump Stock Market

After watching “Forrest Gump” for about the thirtieth time recently, I realized that the US economy and US stock market share a great deal in common with Forrest. In this missive, we will be reminded of the journey of a true American folk hero and of the journey back from the abyss the US economy and stock market have made since early in 2009.

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August 27, 2013

Trickle-Up Economics

Major magazines have a history of putting a topic on their cover at the end of a long-term trend. For example, “The Death of Equities” was a Business Week cover in late 1979, near the end of a miserable stretch in the US stock market. Time’s recent cover story, “The Childfree Life”, got us wondering about the economics of childbearing in the US? Does Time’s cover mark the end of a trend? Can the US economy succeed without homegrown population increases? Will economic success driven by the current demographics in the US trickle down to unemployed blue collar workers? What does this cover, “The Childfree Life”, mean to investors in the US stock market?

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August 20, 2013
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