Welcome to the Long Game

I’m a professional investor who currently works on the buy side (not in public equities). I spend a substantial amount of my time outside of work investing and researching public equities.

I seek to invest high quality businesses that are fundamentally misunderstood or mispriced by the market and have a high probability of compounding at 20%+ for the long term.

My investment style has been influenced by the likes of Munger, Buffet, Nomad investors (Sleep/Zakaria), Pabrai and Spear – but my circle of competence is very different. I have spent a good chunk of my professional life doing growth investing (think late stage venture / growth equity), so while the principles and approach of value investing are critically important to each investment I make, I do tend to have a growth bias and a fair price for a wonderful business can sometimes mean paying a revenue (or gross profit) multiple!

As I’ve become older (and more mature with my investing), I’ve learned the importance of a sound investment process. My approach to investing has evolved to be more structured, to include a fulsome investment memo’s and investment checklists.

What you’ll get on this blog

For now, given I work full time, I don’t want to commit to a specific amount of posts per month. Over time I hope this blog will include:

• Investment research on stocks that I am following or thinking about buying

• General finance musings (this might go into the realm of personal finance)

• Links to interesting things I’ve read or heard

• Resources I think every long term investor should engage with to become a better investor

• Quarterly investment letters – when I start that Pseudo hedge fund (see below!)

Pseudo hedge fund….Huh?

I love reading quarterly / annual investor letters from investors I admire. I think folks like Buffet / Munger, Pabrai and Nick & Zak (from Nomad) have the best job in the world. I thought by creating a pseudo investment partnership I could vicariously live my dream job, without actually having to ask people for the privilege of investing their money. My wife and I are the only investors in this hedge fund. The fund will provide us (the investors) with a quarterly letter discussing performance and investments made. Through this exercise, I am aiming to build a tight list of  ~15 high quality companies which has the potential to compound as a basket at 20%+ per year.

Investment criteria?

My ideal investment is company with the following characteristics:

• Companies that have a strong and deep competitive moat (I love companies that benefit from network effects) or offer a product that is mission critical to its customers

• Operates in a growing industry with macro tailwinds

• Prefer long term business model with scale economics, and that ultimately share scale with customers (i.e. Costco, Amazon, Cloudflare)  or unit economics with high returns on incremental invested capital  

• High integrity management teams and founders that are aligned with shareholders through their own substantial equity

I will also invest in a company which may not meet the above criteria but is fundamentally undervalued (i.e. Ben Graham). These are typically micro cap stocks that are underfollowed.

I’m passionate about eliminating bias from my investment process. Charlie Munger made a speech about the “Psychology of Human Misjudgment”, which every investor should watch – being rational, focused and patient is important.

Why “The Long Game”?

I love the snowball metaphor that Warren Buffet uses to describe the effect of compounding returns and I want to invest in companies that are ‘honestly run compounding machines’ (Nick Sleep).

I don’t short stocks. As Mohnish Pabrai has so eloquently put:

When you look carefully at the economics of shorting, it makes no sense to take the bet. The lowest price a company’s stock can go to is zero, but there’s an unlimited upside. An unleveraged short position has a maximum payoff of 2:1.

Paywall?

I’m not sure to be honest, for now I’d be thrilled if just one person gets something out of my ramblings!

Feedback?

Always welcome. I’d be grateful of any feedback people have as they read this Substack. Feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly.

Stay patient, focused and rational.