We believe it is possible to beat the market by picking winners and avoiding losers. Our experience confirms that outperformance is possible, but not at all times. Our investment team focuses on active management (selecting investments they believe will beat the market). We also have the flexibility to use other managers where needed to cover areas of the market our managers aren’t all over. We will utilise both approaches to give our investors the best opportunity for great returns.
We know markets and prices are influenced by many things. We focus on the factors that we can predict and understand, like the quality and competitive advantage of a particular company, rather than unpredictable factors such as exchange rates and central bank policies.
We are investors not speculators. If we cannot make an informed judgement as to the value of an investment, we will wait until we can. We understand the difference between price and value, and we know the market will get it wrong from time to time. We rely on our own assessment of value, rather than the market’s.
We believe in spreading our bets rather than risking our clients’ money on a handful of “sure bets” that might not come off. In each of our portfolios, we diversify across businesses, sectors and geographies so that no one investment can have an undue influence on our overall returns.
We are long term investors and make our investment decisions accordingly. We are not looking for the stock of the month, but we’d quite like to find the stock of the decade! Many of our clients have an investment timeframe of many decades!
We want our clients to know what to expect. We have summarised our stock-picking framework (known affectionately as STEEPP) along with our broad investment approach on our website and encourage you to visit. We also keep you updated in our investing newsroom. Nobody wants surprises when it comes to investing.
