You’ll excuse us if these market updates are getting a bit out of hand (we naturally prefer to write about things that play out over years, not months) but these past few weeks have given us a front-row seat to the market’s panic-driven, short-term irrationality – a trait that investors (especially passive investors) might...
So far this year we have seen a 10% sell-off in equity markets. We should open by saying this is no cause for concern. You will recall that we noted in our last few letters that statistically speaking, we have been due for a 14% peak to trough sell-off for a while now. Many...
This short piece is a continuation of our previous article challenging the obvious and critical flaws of the ‘efficient market hypothesis’- a theory which states that stock prices reflect all known information, and so always trade at their fair value. If true, that would make it impossible for active managers, such as us, to...
In our most recent quarterly update, we talked about the importance of long-term thinking in a world that is increasingly dominated by short-term news flow. Not to belabor the point, but this concept is so fundamentally important to what we do here at Globescan that we felt it deserved its own article. When we really...
As you know, we run an active, concentrated portfolio. We believe that the best way to maximize long-term wealth is by owning high-quality companies that we can purchase at a discount to their intrinsic value. We also believe that it is less risky for an investor to own 25 stocks which they know inside...
As we approach the end of the year, we would like to take the time to discuss a question we often get from clients: "why isn’t there ‘tax- loss harvesting’ in my portfolio?" For the unfamiliar, tax- loss harvesting is the practice of selling investments to deliberately realize a loss in order to offset...
Here at Globescan, we are investors not traders- we research businesses in detail, understanding them inside and out, and only when we are comfortable with the economics and prospects of a business will we make an initial investment. We see this investment similarly to that of an owner or partner in the business over...
There are all sorts of price multiples, ratios and metrics that investors have come to rely on as shortcuts in determining whether a stock is undervalued or overvalued. Many private investors and even large investment houses rely on these shortcuts in order to make investment decisions. However, such a strategy is naive- these metrics can...
In our most recent quarterly letter, we talked about uncertainty in the markets and how we choose when and where to take risks. We described our preference for investments where we don’t have to make a lot of accurate predictions in order to have a good outcome. In the past, you could have just...
In our last post, Behavioral Biases: A 2 part Series, we discussed some of the behavioral biases which investors often fall victim to, focusing firstly on the emotional biases. In this post, we will continue that discussion, now focusing on the cognitive biases. Unlike emotional biases, which stem from impulse, intuition, and feelings (things most...
