Investment Management

Stalemate Investing, Positively

January and Onward

Jan 15, 2020 - John Osbon ( 4 mins to read)

Most years start the same way. Investors look closely at the price action during the first day, week or month of the new year. No matter which way investments go, price action in the first month is a poor indicator of future returns. Then there are politics, threats of violence around the world, and earnings reports to consider. Declaring an investing stalemate and doing nothing or going to cas...

A Fantastic Investment Story

Bill Browder’s Russian Capitalism Saga

Jan 8, 2020 - Max Osbon ( 7 mins to read)

Red Notice is the incredible story of Bill Browder’s bold journey from young American investor to the largest foreign investor in Russia. This success made him a personal enemy of Russia’s most dangerous oligarchs and public officials. The details are unbelievable and the lessons valuable. The first half of the book focuses on how Bill’s intuition and curiosity led him to a 10,000% return via a...

Get State Owned Enterprises Out of Emerging Markets

Dec 31, 2019 - John Osbon ( 4 mins to read)

Emerging markets are an important asset class that include major countries with massive populations like China and India. Emerging market investments have been accessible for decades, but they’ve often included state-owned enterprise (SOE) holdings — whether you’ve wanted them or not. Maybe you didn’t. State Owned Enterprises are notoriously inefficient, often conflicted and sometimes even over...

Individual Securities Vs. Indexes: Investing’s biggest competition

Dec 24, 2019 - John Osbon ( 4 mins to read)

Nothing is more central to our economy than competition. Competition rewards innovation, smart investments and cost control. We see competition between local restaurants and between global giants like Amazon and FedEx. We also see — and benefit from — competition between divergent ideas and business methods. In the investment world, the competition between stock pickers and indexers has been ra...

Small Stocks for Big Gains

Dec 10, 2019 - John Osbon ( 6 mins to read)

As we enter the final month of the final year of the decade, investors face the eternal question: how much should I have in stocks at this point? As a start on that answer, we must acknowledge that thinking about stocks as one asset class really is an oversimplification. I suggest we look first at a subset of the stock universe that is generally considered the highest potential return element o...

The Big Debt Crisis Article

Dec 3, 2019 - Max Osbon ( 8 mins to read)

Without debt, the majority of people would never be able to own a home. Companies would struggle to build data centers and manufacturing plants. Governments wouldn’t be able to build subway systems, hospitals or highways. No debt means no growth. Still, there are limits. Too much debt, poorly managed, leads to disasters. With this in mind, Ray Dalio and his firm Bridgewater published a massive ...

Demographics Are Fundamental To Investing

Check the basics on the people behind your portfolio

Nov 20, 2019 - John Osbon ( 5 mins to read)

Andy Kessler wrote a great WSJ article on Monday about China and demographics, called “Old Age Will Put China To Rest”. It made me remember how excited we were at Morgan Stanley 35 years ago when we started to collect demographic data outside the United States. Today, in 2019, our access to demographic data has grown exponentially. It's important we use it. Better Data Access Demographic data...

The Go-To-Market Economy

Go-To-Market companies keep our economy growing

Oct 30, 2019 - John Osbon ( 7 mins to read)

What exactly is a go-to-market (GTM) company? A GTM company is intensely focused on creating new and innovative strategies to attract new customers. Rather than building new technology or new service models these companies don’t have to have the latest and greatest offering to attract new business. In order to be viable, they have to have a reasonable path to profitability, typically by achievi...

A Sample Of One – Politics and Investing

What The Markets Don’t Care About

Oct 2, 2019 - John Osbon ( 6 mins to read)

For the second time in twenty years, talk of impeachment is in the air. Like last time, impeachment probably will happen, likely followed quickly by acquittal. The whole show could be over by the end of the year, according to the Speaker of the House. The markets have greeted this news with a giant yawn. Why isn't impeachment more of an event for markets? What are markets saying about the curre...