One of the investors we follow closely here at The Acquirer’s Multiple is Steven Cohen, founder and chairman at Point 72 Asset Management. According to their last reported 13F filing for Q2 2018, Point72 has $25.056 Billion in managed 13F securities.
Cohen recently wrote a great article together with Matthew Granade, managing partner of Point72 Ventures, at the WSJ which provides a warning for investors based on the impact that model-driven companies are having on the changing business landscape saying:
“Software continues to eat the world, but yesterday’s advantage is today’s table stakes. In the hunt for competitive advantage, model-driven companies will accelerate away from the pack now that software has become ubiquitous.”
Here’s an excerpt from that article:
The software revolution has transformed business. What’s next? Processes that constantly improve themselves without need of human intervention.
Marc Andreessen’s essay “Why Software is Eating the World” appeared in this newspaper Aug. 20, 2011. Mr. Andreessen’s analysis was prescient. The companies he identified— Netflix , Amazon, Spotify—did eat their industries. Newer software companies—Didi, Airbnb, Stripe—are also at the table, digging in.
Investors have many different strategies that they can follow to build wealth in the stock market. Income investors tend to prize dividends above all else. Value investors seek to buy stocks that trade below their intrinsic value. Growth investors, on the other hand, aim to buy businesses that hold the greatest upside potential and tend to de-emphasize traditional valuation metrics that generally show a growth stock to be expensive compared with the company’s current earnings.
Growth investing is highly attractive to many investors because buying the right companies early can lead to life-changing returns. However, companies that promise huge upside potential usually trade at lofty valuations. That amps up the risk that they will fail in spectacular fashion if they don’t meet expectations.
So how can investors increase their odds of buying the next Amazon.com(NASDAQ:AMZN) instead of a Fitbit (NASDAQ: FITB)? While there’s no bullet-proof solution to this conundrum, I’ve found that buying companies with the following traits can greatly increase the odds of success:
A large and expanding market opportunity
A durable competitive advantage
Financial resilience
Repeat purchase business model
Strong past price appreciation
Great corporate culture
Talented leadership with skin in the game
Let’s dig into each of these principles in detail to see why they work.
Big gains can be hard to find in the financial markets. Nowadays, though, they seem to be everywhere — and that could change how you feel about taking risks.
As of Nov. 16, the S&P 500 is up 359% since the bull market began March 9, 2009, counting dividends, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. This year alone through Nov. 16, Alphabet (the parent company of Google) has returned 32%, Amazon.com 52%, Apple 50% and Facebook 56%, including dividends. Bitcoin, the digital currency, has gained more than 700% so far this year.
Against that backdrop, even what investors used to regard as a generous annual gain — say, 10% — starts to feel paltry. New research into a mental process called “contrast effects” shows how that works and how it can alter your behavior.
Finance professors Samuel Hartzmark of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Kelly Shue of Yale University’s School of Management analyzed nearly 76,000 earnings announcements from 1984 through 2013 in which companies earned either more or less than investors were expecting.
One of our favorite investors at The Acquirer’s Multiple – Stock Screener is Bill Miller.
Miller served as the Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Legg Mason Capital Management and is remembered for beating the S&P 500 Index for 15 straight years when he ran the Legg Mason Value Trust.
One of the best resources for investors is the Legg Mason Shareholder Letters. One of the best letters ever written by Miller was his Q4 2006 letter in which he discussed the end of his 15 year ‘winning streak’ and how too many investors miss the most important aspect of investing by focusing on value or growth. Miller writes, “The question is not growth or value, but where is the best value?” It’s a must-read for all investors.
Here’s an excerpt from that letter:
Calendar year 2006 was the first year since I took over sole management of the Legg Mason Value Trust in the late fall of 1990 that the Fund trailed the return of the S&P 500. Those 15 consecutive years of outperformance led to a lot of publicity, commentary, and questions about “the streak,” with comparisons being made to Cal Ripken’s consecutive games played streak, or Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak, or Greg Maddux’s 17 consecutive years with 15 or more wins, among others. Now that it is over, I thought shareholders might be interested in a few reflections on it, and on what significance, if any, it has.
Bull markets seem like they should be easier than the alternative but even dealing with gains can be challenging as an investor. Research shows that investors trade more often during bull markets because we don’t know what to do with gains, it’s difficult to hold winners, and there are constant temptations with even bigger winners elsewhere. This piece I wrote for Bloomberg looks at how to deal with big gainers in your portfolio.
*******Major stock indexes are hitting new highs almost daily, adding to the huge gains many securities have posted in recent years. For example, Nvidia Corp. has gained almost 1,800 percent since the start of 2013. Over the past five years or so, Netflix is up 1,375 percent; Tesla is up 835 percent; Facebook is up 590 percent, and Amazon has risen 380 percent. Bitcoin is up more than 900 percent in 2017 alone.If you’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in any of these equities or other market stars, you made the right choice. But investors would be wise to work through their options on how to handle these stocks. Large gains in your portfolio are a good problem to have, but the good news also comes with psychological baggage. Continue Reading →
