Managing a portfolio becomes a whole lot easier when you let the world peek under your kimono to see how the sausage gets made. Why we’re holding 36 tech stocks in our portfolio is clearly documented in past research pieces for the world to see. How we move forward becomes a function of what exposure […]
As the undisputed leader in global indexing, MSCI (MSCI) offers investors a way to slice and dice the global stock universe into buckets. For example, the MSCI ACWI Small Cap Index tracks 6,260 stocks – with an average size of $1.3 billion – across 47 countries. Below you can see how these small-caps stocks outperformed […]
“Never fall in love with a stock,” as the old saying goes. This implies you should always be open to criticisms of stocks you’re holding, even if they come from people who are financially motivated to spread bad news about a company. Short sellers who issue scathing reports epitomize the term “conflict of interest,” yet […]
It’s tough to teach leadership skills, but it’s easier to teach people how to become more comfortable making decisions with limited information. That’s what the HBS Case Method is about. Take a bunch of tomorrow’s leaders who forked over six figures for a network that ultimately won’t live up to their expectations and serve them […]
The father of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) was recently on the Lex Friedman podcast eliciting sympathy from the audience by talking – in that soft-spoken voice – about how difficult his upbringing was. It’s a shame he wasn’t confronted about how much damage he did to retail investors while amassing his wealth. Mr. Palihapitiya […]
Deciding to buy a stock is easy. We spend a minimal amount of time convincing ourselves that it’s worth the risk while conducting due diligence that would hardly be considered sufficient. If 95% of professional money managers can’t succeed at stock picking, spending several hours in your underwear on a Saturday morning “researching” a stock […]
Our recent piece on water IoT stock Xylem (XYL) looked at the wide differences in which the finance community defines a growth stock. Usually, this involves looking at earnings growth which doesn’t work so well for disruptive growth stocks which typically don’t have positive earnings. That’s why revenue growth becomes such an important metric for […]
About 20 years ago, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) introduced a new concept called goodwill impairment, which despite the name has nothing to do with being charitably challenged (see Jeff Bezos). Just the opposite, in fact. Goodwill in accounting speak refers to the premium one company donates pays for another that is supposed to […]
Investing in disruptive technologies sounds easy on paper. First, you identify when a technology moves from being emerging (team-with-a-dream) to disruptive (meaningful revenues growing quickly). Second, you find the leader(s) and invest in them, trusting that economies of scale will benefit the biggest fish in the pond. But things quickly become complicated when the technology […]
If we had to pick our best quality, it would probably be modesty. Unlike other pundits, you won’t hear us constantly flaunting our best calls. We almost never mention the fact that we sold our Ali Baba holding right before shares tanked because of risks we pointed out. That call we made on Palantir and […]