Category: Missives

Rational Despair and Analogous Situations

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: Randall Forsyth of Barron’s wrote a piece on May 31st, 2012 called, “Irrational Exuberance’s Flip Side Seen in Low Bond Yields”. It reminded me of the following and wise joke. A younger person asks

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We’re Off to See the Wizard

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: We’re off to see the Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. You’ll find he is a whiz of a Wiz! If ever a Wiz! there was. If ever oh ever a Wiz! there was

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The Vision Thing II

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: In May of 2010 we wrote about how important it was for the companies which meet our eight criteria to have a strong vision and clear agenda for their business. When President George Herbert

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“Real” Career Risk

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: Jeremy Grantham is a brilliant asset allocator, writer and thinker. He works for an organization (GMO) of great people in those disciplines. He released his quarterly letter to the public recently entitled “My Sister’s

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The Value of Sentiment Polls

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: We at Smead Capital Management (SCM) have made the case that the poor performance of the US stock market from the end of 1999 to the end of 2008 has caused most institutional and

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Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Doomsday?

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: One of my favorite songs of the late 1960’s was “Abraham, Martin and John”. It reminded us that a number of our country’s leaders had been assassinated. Investments aren’t nearly as important as life

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Mr. BRIC Trade is on Our Side

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: A recent article in “The National” quoted Jim O’Neil as saying that current supply and demand for oil indicates that $80 to $100 per barrel for Brent Crude would be a fair price. For

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Defining Risk: Warren Buffett’s Three Kinds of Investments

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: In his recent 2011 shareholder letter, Warren Buffett explained the purpose behind investing, the “real” definition of risk, and the three types of investments which congregate the marketplace. At Smead Capital Management, we believe

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Is Popularity Ruining Indexing?

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Dear Fellow Investors: We have been traveling around the world delivering a talk to CFA Societies on why passive indexes beat most active equity funds. We start the talk with the following William Sharpe quote from 2002:

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Out of Bondage

William Smead Chief Executive Officer Chief Investment Officer Printable Version   Dear Fellow Investors: In the Bible’s books of Genesis and Exodus we are told that as Prime Minister of Egypt, Joseph was wise enough to store up massive amounts of grain in a seven–year

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