The importance of savings and investment (Part III)
In Parts I and II of this four part blog, we went back to first principles of savings, investment and trade. We then gave consideration to the trajectories of savings and investment of the US to see if we could make any sensible assessments of the likely trajectory of its current account and the US dollar. […]
Was Warren being a bit too cheeky?
Over the weekend Berkshire Hathaway, the company that has been under Warren Buffett’s stewardship for more than half a century, released its annual report and letter to shareholders. Buffett’s letter is renowned for being an entertaining read containing pearls of investing wisdom and risqué gems of wit. So this year, was Warren being a bit […]
The importance of savings and investment (Part II)
In Part I of this four part blog, we went back to first principles of savings, investment and trade. We now seek to give consideration to the trajectories of savings and investment of the major global economic blocs to see if we can make any sensible assessments of the likely trajectories of their associated current accounts […]
The importance of savings and investment (Part I)
We manage a portfolio of earnings streams and cash holdings denominated in a range of currencies. It is important, therefore, to: (i) be clear about the exposures that are contained in the portfolio; and (ii) ensure that these exposures are sensible in light of the global economic environment in which we find ourselves. We seek […]
Caring About the Downside
As frequent readers of this blog will recall, a key tenet of the Montaka approach is to protect our clients’ capital. In simple terms, we do all that we can to choose investments where we believe there is a low probability of loss; our number one rule is to not lose money. Framing our investment […]
What is David Swensen thinking?
Last month David Swensen, Chief Investment Officer at Yale University, participated in a keynote conversation at the Stephen C. Freidheim Symposium on Global economics. During the session Swensen presented his thinking on a range of investment topics that are timelessly important as well as pertinent to the environment we are faced with today as investors. […]
Alternative histories and investing
In preparation for the annual Montaka offsite, where the team gathers to discuss our investment process and whether tweaks can be made to improve performance, each team member is required to study Chapter Two of Nassim Taleb’s book, Fooled By Randomness. It’s worth asking what could make one chapter so important and worthy of this […]
RH restoring more than hardware
Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers. On the eve of this Black Friday, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at one traditional retailer that appears to have bucked the deteriorating brick and mortar retail trend, and consider what the management team has done to not only stabilise, but turn around, the […]
The Panacea of Portfolio Construction
We know many of our investors are faced with the challenge of constructing portfolios. Typically, we are not the only strategy owned by our investors, so the challenge becomes one of optimising an overall portfolio of a number of different strategies. We have spent some time thinking about the challenge of portfolio construction. And we […]
Fund Manager Fees and Fallacies
Imagine you wrote an annual letter that was read by investors worldwide looking to you for guidance. What would you write about fund manager fees? When addressing the collective, there really is only one answer: the lower the fees the better. Warren Buffett continually finds himself in such a position. His annual letter to shareholders […]
