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14 August 2022
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Handling extreme winners is a complex task. Conventional wisdom such as “you never go broke taking a profit” often leaves a lot of money on the table as strong growth stocks continue to run.
Investing is a field where experience matters, but we all operate with a set of beliefs. Staying on top of market research gives useful lessons for investors and challenges common assumptions.
Although equities are widely-held by Australian investors, there is a strong domestic bias that gives many portfolios high sector concentrations. Better diversification requires a global focus.
Look for a company whose prices are rising faster than inflation without customer churn, while leveraging its existing strong relationships to cross sell or up sell or some mix of both.
Investors underestimate the power of network effects, which increase the lifetime value of users and deliver high incremental margins with fixed operating costs. It's worth trawling the market for strong network effects.
Structuring an investment team around geography or sectors leads to manager bias in poor sectors. Better to focus on a few areas of fascination where product and business expertise can develop.
Now we're captivated by inflation and higher rates but only a year ago, investors were certain of the supremacy of US companies, the benign nature of inflation and the remoteness of tighter monetary policy.
Companies have been slow to update guidance and we have yet to see the impact of inflation expectations in earnings and outlooks. Companies need to insulate costs from inflation while enjoying an uptick in revenue.
Weaker share prices may have already discounted some bad news, but cost inflation is creating wide divergences inside and across sectors. Early results show some companies are strong enough to resist sector falls.
In 2002, the share price of the company that became Sydney Airport (SYD) hit 80 cents from the $2 IPO price. After 20 years of astute investment driving revenue increases, it sold to private hands for $8.75 in 2022.
There are significant differences in the sector weightings of an ethical fund versus an index, and while this has caused some short-term headwinds recently, the tailwinds are expected to blow over the long term.
Many new investors make common mistakes while learning about markets. Losses are inevitable. Newbies should read more and develop a long-term focus while avoiding big mistakes and not aiming to be brilliant.
Lenders use Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities to finance mortgages and RMBS are available to retail investors through fund structures. They come with many layers of protection beyond movements in house prices.