• We believe “partner” more accurately describes our relationship than “client”; our own capital is invested alongside that of our partners.
  • We have an intense distaste for many of the investor-unfriendly practices in this industry. We believe we are very different.
  • We are engaged in just one business: Investment management. Therefore, we have no conflicts.
  • We are as communicative and transparent with our partners as possible. 

Partnership relationship

  • We define risk as the likelihood of losing capital, not as the likelihood of performance deviating from an arbitrary benchmark.
  • We believe excessive focus on what we DON’T like can misallocate our partners’ capital.
  • As such, we consider ourselves benchmark conscious but not benchmark obsessed. Over an investment cycle, we believe our performance is best judged vs. the Russell 3000.
  • Volatility is a fact of life. In our experience the greatest investment opportunities are borne out of volatility. We strive to position ourselves to take advantage of it whenever we can.
  • We believe that if we protect the downside, the upside will take care of itself.

Approach to risk

  • As the market has become extremely short term oriented, opportunities are created for those willing to be patient, and occasionally look through the short term “noise”.
  • In our experience, once the “catalyst” happens, it is typically already reflected in the stock.  (In other words, we would rather be too early than too late.)

Time horizon arbitrage

  • Our portfolio managers have a long and successful track record managing value-oriented portfolios in a variety of asset classes: large, mid, small, global, long/short.
  • Our partners are best served with the widest and deepest possible fishing pond.
  • An optimal portfolio possesses the flexibility to quickly capitalize on any given opportunity set.
  • Our portfolio will typically have a combination of large, medium and small companies.   

“All cap” portfolio

  • Our best investments tend to play out over relatively long periods of time.
  • Our average historical turnover is 30-50% annually.
  • Our low turnover results in better after tax returns.

Low turnover

     Ample liquidity

    • Large institutions face “the diseconomies of scale”, associated with having large ownership positions.
    • We are a boutique that won’t face that situation for the foreseeable future.
    • We will never penalize our partners and ourselves simply for the sake of managing more money.