Sales Desk – US & Canada   1.877.701.2883
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

Smooth Returns

Harry Markopolos was working for a hedge fund of funds and attempting to put a portfolio together that would “smooth” long-term returns. In the process of marketing what his company was doing, he ran into a client who already had a money manager doing that for him. The money manager the client used was Bernie Madoff. When Markopolous looked at the long-term track record of Madoff’s client, he instantly knew that it was mathematically impossible to have a return that high with as little year-to-year variance in the return. We at Smead Capital Management would like to ask a few questions. How do you legally “smooth” investment returns? What price do you pay to “smooth” returns? Why do we as long-duration common stock owners not care about “smooth” returns?

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March 5, 2013

Losing the Bid

Many times in my 32-year career people ask me to comment on whether an established trend for a popular investment will stay intact. The most recent example was last year (2012) when our firm was asked on numerous occasions to comment on the stock of Apple. My answer is always the same. We don’t know when the hot streak will end for the popular investment and we don’t feel comfortable with popular securities.

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February 26, 2013

Our Job: Whether; Market’s Job: When

Warren Buffett describes the stock market’s purpose as being “a wonderfully efficient mechanism for transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient”. We are reminded of this by a series of news reports and commentaries on subjects greatly influenced by basic economics. In today’s missive, we consider what the law of supply and demand says about China, oil, and housing in the USA.

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February 12, 2013

Too Active, Too Passive: Too Little Understanding

The wealth management and institutional consulting communities have allowed indexing to be called “passive” investing and stock-picking disciplines to be called “active” management. This implies a mindless approach to indexing and a great deal of busyness to stock picking. A number of recent articles and commentaries have been written which question the viability of stock-picking disciplines in an era of numerous indexing choices and ETF vehicles. We at Smead Capital Management believe these labels are at the heart of a great deal of confusion about what works and what doesn’t work in both equity mutual funds and separately managed accounts.

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February 5, 2013

2013, “Things Can Only Get Better”

As long-duration common stock owners, we at Smead Capital Management don’t put much emphasis on predicting the year-to-year movements in the stock market. We expect at least a 10 percent or greater decline during each year and a greater than 20 percent decline at least once every five years. With that caveat in place, we will throw our two cents into the debate about what the US stock market will do in 2013.

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January 8, 2013

Does China Pass the Smell Test?

We at Smead Capital Management believe that prolonged faith in China’s economy and the belief that emerging market growth will be an elixir for developed market multi-national companies is the erroneous gift that just keeps giving. If China’s economy has been successfully soft landed from its boom, why is the internal Shanghai Composite index making new lows as recently as last week (November 29th, 2012)? From its peak on October 16, 2007 through December 3, 2012, the Shanghai Composite is down over 64.8%, whereas the S&P 500 is up 2.7% on a total return basis. We at Smead Capital believe that China’s boom and the boom in commodity prices which it undergirded do not pass the smell test!

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December 11, 2012

Economics 101: Little Return without Risk

A tremendous amount of energy and effort has been expended in the US on behalf of wealthy investors to secure returns while reducing risk. Like any useful endeavor, it started out as a wise thing and reached its stride in the late 1990’s as a way to deal with a massive asset misallocation. As Warren Buffett always says, “What the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end”. It appears to us that the efforts to eliminate risk in the US capital markets have reach the “foolish” point.

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December 4, 2012

The Who: Talking About a Bargain in US Large Cap

As we approach the end of 2012, those of us at Smead Capital Management are struck by how helpful the band, The Who, could be to those who are interested in relative performance. Their comments on demographics, psychology and relative value are as beneficial to the contrarian investor today as they were 40 years ago when their songs were first popularized.

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November 20, 2012

Voluntary Exile

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: The Bible is full of stories of God’s people living in exile on their own volition. A famine occurred in the land of “milk and honey”, so the Hebrews moved to Egypt at the

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October 23, 2012

Circle the Wagons

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: We spoke to two small groups in Spokane on September 21st, 2012. For better or worse, when I think of Spokane I think of my cousin Gary. It was 1981 and yours truly was

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October 2, 2012
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