In an upcoming episode of A Book With Legs podcast, we interviewed Robert Hagstrom on his book, Investing: The Last Liberal Art.
In our recent media engagements, we have been asked if the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the cause of the carnage in the stock market this year.
Warren Buffett released his 2021 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter on Saturday, February 26, 2022. He seemed to want to talk about almost anything besides the stock market.
A couple of weeks ago, we gave a presentation at the first annual Smead Investor Conference near our headquarters in Phoenix.
We operate under the premise that alpha can be generated by stock selection, courage, concentration, and long-duration holding periods.
We were watching CNBC recently and an analyst mentioned what practically nobody besides us has said.
Ben Graham is ascribed as being the father of value investing.
On April 12, 2019, Chevron (CVX) and its CEO, Mike Wirth, offered $33 billion dollars to buy the common shares of Anadarko Petroleum.
There are three pillars of investing for us at Smead Capital Management.
The beginning to 2022 has been dark to say the least.
Most professionals who employ our strategy are wide-asset allocators
We have been reading a book written by David Carey and John Morris called King of Capital. It is the story of the Blackstone company and its key founder, Stephen Schwarzman. An economic history from the 1980s through today is included and lays out some excellent reminders of certain disciplines which can create wealth in picking public companies to invest in.
In the depths of the lockdowns in March and April, we were together at home, day after day. The U.S. Federal Reserve Board pumped large amounts of liquidity in our economic system. The U.S. Federal Government followed by providing large amounts of fiscal stimulus in PPP loans...
Overall common stock index performance can be a very confusing thing to most investors. From a cyclical standpoint, the history of stock price performance in the U.S. is closely associated with the Federal Reserve Board. When the Federal Reserve Board reverses an accommodative interest rate policy, it is affectionately referred to as “pulling the punch bowl.”
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger always refer to Aesop as the originator of investment logic. His first dictum was “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” His second dictum was the fable of the “Tortoise and the Hare.”
In 2014, famed UK stock picker Terry Smith wrote a piece, titled Shale: Miracle, Revolution or Bandwagon?, in most ways mocking investors excitement in the oil and gas business in the United States of America.
At Smead Capital Management, we practice our discipline of picking and owning stocks which meet our eight criteria in both favorable and unfavorable environments. The current “blithe spirits” were brought to mind in a movie of the same name.
During our quarterly webcast last week (October 21, 2021), someone asked us a great question. They asked, “Does the ten-year Treasury bond rate at 1.65% and an inflation rate of 5% teach us that inflation will be transitory?” It is an important question because the majority of economists and market strategists are betting that inflation is transitory.
Today’s atmosphere is one that we rarely see as investors. This is not like junk bonds in the 1980’s or the run up in Valeant Pharmaceuticals and the other generic drug companies in the 2010’s. There is not a narrow way of looking at today. It is broad.
We have entered the phase when the body politic and public opinion are aware that Facebook is disturbing our society. This is very important to us as investors, because the big tech companies make up a disproportionately large part of the S&P 500 Index.
The media and the economics profession are treating inflation like it is a friendly puppy dog. They think you can take it out of its pen and play with it for a while. The popular theory is that you bring it out in a severe dip in economic activity and when the economy gets back on its feet, you kindly ask inflation to crawl back into its pen like any good puppy dog would do.
The talk of inflation today looks much like housing did in 2007. Evidence is mounting everywhere that this is a real long-term problem that is only getting worse. You can read this in the media, but yet security prices don’t reflect how damaging this may be.
Let us share some of the “bizarre red-blue lights flashing” in the S&P 500 Index.
Investors often ask our team at Smead Capital Management what we spend our time on. We believe reading is the best use of our time to learn and think about the way that we can profitably apply capital for our investors.
We have argued for years that the biggest mistake being made by Berkshire Hathaway was not giving shareholders access to the thoughts and investment discipline of their two talented stock pickers, Ted Weschler and Todd Combs. After all, Buffett calls the shareholders “partners” and has not allowed his partners to understand anything about the strategies and results of upwards of $30 billion of shareholder capital.
We have been in many discussions with our investors, people in the media and the investment management industry on where housing is today.
In the summer of 2020, we didn’t know quite a few things about how Americans would react when they got their social and entertainment choices back.
On the insistence from a friend and a colleague, I watched the movie There Will Be Blood over the weekend.
We’ve been thinking about John Locke’s “Law of Fashion” in the context of the U.S. common stock market.
The great philosopher, John Locke, brilliantly captured the way the world works.
At a minimum, the latter part of 2020 and the first half of 2021 will go down as one of the strangest psychological times for common stock investors.
Halfway through the year 2021, we must be reminded to “not confuse brains with a bull market.”
Most millennials have never seen an era where value has done well.
We have been long-term owners of Amgen (AMGN), Merck (MRK) and Pfizer (PFE) among the major pharma/biotech companies
Now that investors are reconsidering active stock picking and are especially interested in value stock strategies, let’s analyze where excess stock market returns come from.
As Amazon prepares to buy MGM Studios and announced an effort to put pharmaceutical stores all over the U.S., we are reminded of one of my favorite comedy movies, Silent Movie
My recent reads have been stuck in the 1960’s, including Adam Smith’s The Money Game and Andrew Knowton’s Shaking the Money Tree.
“History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” – Mark Twain
To say that we were surprised by some of the discussion at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting would be an understatement. The conversation Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger leaned into on inflation was possibly the most interesting. Warren and Charlie gave large credit to Larry Summers for his willingness to stand alone on the effects of today’s fiscal and monetary policy on prices. We thought this was an ideal time review Buffett and Munger’s discussion and see what conclusions we could draw.
The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting was a mixture of caution, wisdom and honesty.
Now that the leaders of the most popular tech companies are going into outer space, we thought it appropriate to consider the return implications of this urge to “explore strange new worlds.”
As we have been holding calls with prospective and current investors of our firm, we have been arguing that the stock market is underwhelming the success of the economy.
Even before the war is over, the winning side needs to consider how to “win the peace” which will follow.
Dumb and Dumber was a 1994 movie which tells the story of Lloyd Christmas (Jim Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels)
My generation, millennials (those born from 1980 to 2000), have been noted for much of the last 10 years to be a risk averse group.
Lina Khan is being appointed to the Federal Trade Commission by President Biden’s administration.
My wife are new residents to the Phoenix-area, since moving here in the middle of 2020. We haven’t fully settled on where to send a couple of our kids to school.
Today’s stock market looks like the love affair between Danny and Sandy at Rydell High. Sandy is “hopelessly devoted” to Danny, even though he is the leader of a Los Angeles high school gang.
Warren Buffett’s annual letter was great in all the easy ways and disappointing in the ways that matter the most to his shareholder partners
We think this is an excellent time to ponder the thoughts of Buffett and Munger.
