Q1 2023 Investment Commentary: Where we are h...
The first quarter of 2023 was marked by a partial recovery of 2022s losses, though the path to recovery was not without emergent risk. In early March, Silicon...
Q4 2022 Investment Commentary: Trends to cons...
2022 was an incredibly difficult year in financial markets. Not much went right for our portfolios other than Elon Musk buying Twitter for what was likely far too...
Q3 2022 Investment Commentary: The Long-Term ...
The third quarter saw a continuation of the ugly trend from the first half of the year. September was the worst month for stocks since 2008 and the first three...
Q2 2022 Investment Commentary: Are we heading...
Are we heading for a recession? This is the question on everyone’s mind as markets fell sharply during the second quarter on the heels of high inflation data...
Q1 2022 Investment Commentary: Perspective an...
The start of the year has not been kind to equity investors and especially so to our portfolio. Many of the same trends that persisted through the second half of...
2021 Year-End Investment Commentary
January 1, 2022 marked 10 years since Elliot partnered with Jason to kick off the RGA Investment Advisors reformation and entry into active management. When we...
Q3 2021 Investment Commentary: Looking inward...
The third quarter concluded with the worst month for equity markets since March 2020. That said, the month of September was hardly worth comparing to the peak of...
Q2 2021 Investment Commentary: ”Roads? Wher...
The half year mark presents the opportunity to reflect on aspirations heading into the year and expectations for the balance of it. Heading into the year, our...
Q1 2021 Investment Commentary: Growth vs Valu...
The story of the Q1’ 2021 in many respects centered around the positioning of highly levered hedge funds. In January, prominent hedge fund Melvin Capital...
Q4 2020 Investment Commentary: “2020 is...
None of us will forget 2020. Collectively, we faced immense challenges brought on by a kind of pandemic that infects humanity once every hundred years. We find...
Q3 2020 Investment Commentary: Ignition
It certainly is a bizarre feeling observing the strength in our investment portfolios amidst the backdrop of an unprecedented global pandemic and recession; however...
Q2’2020 Investment Commentary: The Tale...
In our Q1 2019 commentary we expressed how “COVID-19 will kick off one of the most profound reshaping of our world any of us will see in our lifetime,”...
Twitter (Nasdaq: TWTR) Presentation at Wide-M...
Elliot Turner was honored to present his in-depth investment thesis on Twitter (Nasdaq: TWTR) at Wide-Moat Investing Summit 2020. We are excited to share his slides...
Q1’2020 Investment Commentary: Building...
Dear Client, We hope you all are staying safe and well through these challenging times. COVID-19 is something personal and scary for us all. Our team and...
March 2020 Investor Letter
Dear Client, Many prognosticators call a 20% drawdown from peak to trough in markets a bear market. The week that started March 9, 2020, exactly 11 years...
#WeBackJack – Our Open Letter to Elliot...
March 4, 2020 Dear Elliott Management, As long-term shareholders of Twitter, we think efforts to oust co-founder Jack Dorsey from the CEO role again would...
Q4’2019 Investment Commentary – 2...
2019 saw the S&P register a 30% total return. In isolation, this looks like a banner year, and it sure was; however, when we take a step back and look at the...
Q3’2019 Investment Commentary – K...
2018 was a watershed year for turning this formerly illegal activity into a regulated, legal activity. Many regular people cheered and entrepreneurs greeted the...
Q2’2019 Investment Commentary
The second quarter was a little choppier than the first quarter, with an upward bias in the end. Markets largely spent time digesting the magnitude of the moves...
Q1’2019 Investment Commentary
We’d like to take a moment, ahead of our investment commentary, to share some exciting happenings within our investment practice. Our firm has come a long way...
2018 Year-end Investment Commentary: Easy Com...
As the saying goes, markets go up on an escalator, down on an elevator. January 2018s smooth escalator ride higher was more than outweighed by December’s swift...
Q3’2018 Investment Commentary
The second quarter was outstanding for our portfolios; however, the market absolved us of the opportunity to take comfort in those results rather swiftly. While...
Q2’2018 Investment Commentary
We are now at the halfway mark of the year, which always sets the stage nicely for a review of expectations coming into the year.[1] We will refrain from pounding...
Q1’2018 Investment Commentary
The first quarter of 2018 began much the same way 2017 ended: with markets steadily grinding higher daily, while expected volatility plummeted. It seemed almost...
Q4’2017 Year-end Review and 2018 Preview
2017 was a banner year for US equity markets with the S&P returning 21.83% and the technology sector leading the way. Markets rose steadily through the year,...
Walgreens Boots Alliance: Owner-Operator-Run ...
Elliot Turner was honored to present his in-depth investment thesis on Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) at the MOI Global Best Ideas 2018 investment...
Q3’17 Investment Commentary
One of our biggest mistakes was not investing in Amazon shortly after reading Josh Tarasoff’s 2012 VALUEx presentation, instantly recognizing the appeal and...
Q2’17 Investment Commentary
The technology sector come into focus in the second quarter of 2017. At the same time, the end of the “Trump Trade” we spoke about in our first quarter...
Q1’17 Investment Commentary
Many of the themes from the end of 2016 persisted into the early first quarter of 2017. Around the second week of February, the so-called “Trump Trade” reached...
2016 Year-end Investment Commentary
The calendar turning is an arbitrary metric-point from which to measure and assess the recent past and what it portends for the future. It is a moment when we can...
On the Matter of Correlations
The third quarter was a strong one, with the S&P rising 3.26% and the Russell 2000 tacking on 8.03%. After several consecutive years of summertime volatility,...
An Envestnet for the Long Run
Elliot Turner was honored to present at the 2016 Value Conferences Wide Moat Investing Summit. He presented IMAX at the inaugural event three years ago followed by...
Brexit is No Lehman
As of last week, the story for this quarter was going to be different. We were going to highlight the more orderly recovery in stocks taking place after a chaotic...
Get Your Heavy Duty Staple Remover Ready
On August 25, 2014 the S&P crossed 2000 for the first time. We are nearly two-years past that milestone (now 21 months), yet the S&P continues to wrestle...
You Can’t Smooth the Lumps
"Charlie (Munger) and I would much rather earn a lumpy 15 percent over time than a smooth 12 percent." – Warren Buffett We called February a “tale...
The Yield Curve is Flat Wrong
On the month, the S&P lost 0.19%, while the Russell 2000 shed a modest 0.22%. On the surface, February appears to be an uneventful market month. In reality, the...
Robust Networks for the Long Term
January 2016 got off to a fast start in the wrong direction. The first trading day of the year saw the S&P fall 1.4% and the selling continued from there. The...
Mixed Messages
Our 2015 outlook was the second consecutive to include the notion that markets would be weaker than the broader economy. Specifically, we said that “we continue...
Fade Disruption
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” “The future ain’t what it used to be.” –Yogi Berra How will the future...
Decreasing Correlations and Our Investment in...
At the end of last quarter, we called the market selloff “a liquidation move.”[1] During October, stocks recovered much of their losses from the prior few...
A Liquidation Move
In the third quarter, the S&P lost 6.9%. This was the worst quarterly decline since the third quarter of 2011 when the debt ceiling and Europe’s potential...
August 2015 Investment Commentary: Zones of R...
Our 2015 Investment Outlook was built around the following expectation: “… 2014 concluded with the U.S. economy on as solid a foundation as it has been in...
June 2015 Investment Commentary: Deja Vu
The S&P spent the entire second quarter locked in a tight range, ending essentially flat. Markets would have registered modest gains were it not for the...
eBay PayPal Split Analysis: Buy Two Moats for...
Elliot Turner was honored to present at the 2015 Value Conferences Wide Moat Investing Summit. He presented IMAX at the inaugural event two years ago. At this third...
Driving Towards Greater Returns
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." --Robert Frost, The Road Not...
ETF Fund Flows
ETFs have been a tremendously popular tool for investors of all types. For long-term investors, these securities provide a lower-fee alternative to mutual funds,...
Negative Feedback Loops
“No matter how cold the winter, there’s a springtime ahead.” – Pearl Jam With the first quarter now history, the S&P 500 boosted its...
Investment Strategy Overview
Please click here to view the RGA Investment Advisors LLC Ashland Firm-wide Verification Letter Please click here to view the RGA Investment Advisors LLC...
Long Term Investing
During the month of February we were lucky enough to get our hands on an investment book called 100 to 1 In the Stock Market: A Distinguished Security Analyst Tells...
Pursuing the Energy Sector for Value Opportun...
The month of January saw a continuation of 2014 year-end market trends. Crude oil continued its decline, shedding another 12.5%. Energy-induced volatility helped...
The oil investors who don’t even know it
Last month we commented on the swift decline in oil prices and its consequences on the economy and your portfolios. This was by far our most read commentary to...
Our 2015 Investment Outlook
The big events of 2014 In 2014, the S&P 500 returned 11.4% in what appears like a steady continuation of the bull market that began in March of 2009. This is...
Flooded in Oil
October was an eventful month in global markets. At the midpoint of the month, the S&P hit a low 7.7% below that of the month’s start and just shy of 10%...
The Great Divide
Last quarter was not your typical quarter in financial markets. While the S&P registered a flattish +0.62% on the quarter, suggestive of complacency, there was...
Indexation Creates Opportunity
Of late, the financial press has been filled with headlines about the rise (and commensurate fall) of passive (active) investing. This is one of those topics on...
Geopolitics
During July some became concerned about rising geopolitical risks. We caution that such risks tend to be a matter of perception more so than economic risk....
What You See Is Not Necessarily What You Get
As we hit the halfway mark on the calendar year, it’s worth reflecting on the expectations we outlined in our 2014 preview. If you recall, we emphasized that...
Framing Broadly and Thinking Globally
What’s a valuation conscious investor to do in the face of markets hitting all-time highs on an absolute basis, and expensive valuations on a relative basis? This...
April 2014 Investment Commentary
"In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep." -- Albert Einstein Were one to look at the S&P 500 or...
Flushing out Momentum
Two themes are quickly emerging this year and both have been covered in these commentaries: 1) the economy needs to catch up to the stock market; and, 2) pockets...
Rational Expectations through Pockets of Mome...
In February, markets (as represented by the S&P 500) recouped all of their January losses and closed the month essentially flat for the year. In our 2014...
Emerging Markets, Discounting the Obvious
“To establish the right price for a stock, the market must have adequate information, but it by no means follows that if the market has this information it will...
Our 2014 Investment Outlook
December 2013 Commentary “The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always...
Tapering
November 2013 Commentary Tapering In our May 2013 Commentary, we made our first reference to the potential for the Federal Reserve Bank to “taper” its...
Our ‘Actively Passive’ Investment Str...
October 2013 Commentary Our ‘Actively Passive' Investment Strategy In our last commentary, we highlighted the relationship between the market’s...
Beware of Mistaking a Symptom for the Cause
September 2013 Commentary Beware of Mistaking a Symptom for the Cause “If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause, it’s quite a bit like...
Tesla Motors
August 2013 Commentary Tesla Motors: A Disruptive Company but Speculative Investment August saw markets largely churn. A brief rally to start the month...
Europe, One Year Later: Our Conviction Remain...
July 2013 Commentary Europe, One Year Later: Our Conviction Remains Since 2010, each summer has come with a different shade of panic. In 2010, we had the...
Investments
June 2013 Commentary Investments The positive momentum for the stock market carried through from the first quarter to the second. The S&P 500 led...
Investments
May 2013 Commentary Investments Those who simply sold this May to go away missed out on a decently strong month. The strength was most pronounced in the...
The Market at an All-Time High
April 2013 Commentary The Market at an All-Time High Last month, we pointed out the significance of all the major market indices (sans the NASDAQ) surging...
What do we own?
March 2013 Commentary What do we own? This month we would like to introduce a new section to our quarterly commentary entitled What do we own? In this...
IMAX Investment Thesis
February 2013 Commentary IMAX Investment Thesis There is yet more positive we can say about IMAX and feel as though the international story could justify...
Investments
February 2013 Commentary Investments "Own competently managed, competitively advantaged businesses at discounted prices." – Burton Malkiel The...
High Yield Corporate Debt Markets
January 2013 Commentary High Yield Corporate Debt Markets When we published our year-end commentary highlighting the more constructive developments...
The Fiscal Cliff (or not)
November 2012 Commentary The Fiscal Cliff (or not) Complex Adaptive Systems In October of this year, Jason and Elliot had the privilege of attending...
Looking forward to 2013
2012 Year-End Investment Commentary Looking forward to 2013 “Saw things clearer, once you, were in my rearview mirror” – Pearl Jam “It is better...
In the Wake of Hurricane Sandy
October 2012 Commentary In the Wake of Hurricane Sandy The Month of October The month of October was as spooky a timeframe in markets as it was...
Politics, QE, and more
September 2012 Commentary Politics, QE, and more The 3rd Quarter The third quarter of 2012 could very well go down in history as a pivotal moment in...
Politics Are Short-Term, Focus Long-Term
August 2012 Commentary Politics Are Short-Term, Focus Long-Term August closed with equity markets spending 18 days in a tight consolidation—the S&P...
Bulls and Bears
July 2012 Commentary The Month of July The month of July saw the Bulls and Bears engaged in a brutal bout of tug-of-war on two crucial battlegrounds: the...