Commentary

Strategy Letter - Desengaño

“Desengaño” was noted by one Antonio Garcia Martinez in his most excellent book, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, as a unique style of Spanish genre painting.

Commentary

Herding the Gray Rhinos

As we have noted in this space in the past, there is a lot of the world that cannot be captured by the most elegant and detailed of spreadsheets.

Commentary

Herding the Gray Rhinos

As we have noted in this space in the past, there is a lot of the world that cannot be captured by the most elegant and detailed of spreadsheets.

Commentary

To Infinity and Beyond – and the Usual New Year Review Stuff

Every year has plenty of lessons when looking backward in December.

Commentary

VSAT and Inmarsat: Did We Just Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?

When your largest position, Viasat Inc. (Ticker: VSAT), enters into a transformational merger involving regulatory complexity, interesting technology, enough equity issuance to require a shareholder vote, and a conceptual doubling down against what might be called the “Elon Musk-generated low-earth-orbit satellites (LEO) space craze...

Commentary

Don’t Get Rugged

Be forewarned – we are going to empty the quote bin this quarter.

Commentary

Q1 2021 Strategy Letter

Well, let’s just say things are different in 2021.

Commentary

December 2020 Strategy Letter - Soufflés and Sledgehammers

As we have noted previously, one cannot practically ignore the celebration regarding our annual lap around the sun, although I think it’s fair to say that there are roughly 7.5 billion people outside of Silicon Valley—or those who run large cap growth/tech funds—that are delighted to see 2020 declared over.

Commentary

Mr. T and Today’s Investment World

It would be correct to say that a number of us have had a little more “alone” time on our hands over the last 6 months and it is also correct to note that the online world provides many chances to waste said time. Which brings me to Mr. T of A-Team fame, who for completely nostalgic and personal family reasons, comes to the fore at particular times with his “I Pity the Fool” meme.

Commentary

2020 Is Cancelled

  • How this environment stacks up in a 36-year value investing career
  • 5 things we think are important for our investors
  • What we are actually doing in our portfolios right now
Commentary

Here is a Strategy: Buy as Much ViaSat as You Can Stomach

We spend a lot of time in these pages endeavoring to wax poetically about the world at large and our investment place within it, even though that is not really what we do for a living. We get it. Some people just want to know our thoughts about the investment world…and yes, we do have opinions on that subject.

Commentary

Repetition Can Be a Form of Change

Despite Sauron and Einstein’s failed attempts at unified theory, 2019 was simply the tenth year whereby interest rates were low and went lower, credit remained both cheap and plentiful, the economy was “good enough,” and those who can print money re-dedicated themselves to a willingness to print money. The logical conclusion to this set of events is to buy and hold U.S. equities. Drop the mic—again.

Commentary

Tales From the Proxy…Cont’d.

"I am more worried about this election trend than Russian issues. "

Commentary

The Great Complacency...Continued

At this point last year, we were effusively cautious after a period of terrific performance. We suggested that while we considered a material number of portfolio stocks to represent "solid" values, their near-term appreciation was going to be limited after the big numbers of 2013.
Commentary

Metastability?

We remain cheerfully bearish on fixed income and slightly less so on equity markets. The combination of volatility and confusion produces opportunities and since we have had a lot less of the former, we have seen a lot fewer of the latter. Not much of this has changed this year...but things do change-sometimes for reasons we can "see" and sometimes due to factors we can't. We remain utterly convinced that Federal Reserve policy is our greatest known unknown and we remain extraordinarily skeptical that the Great Monetary Experiment will end with a purely beneficial outcome. This quart