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Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio It's not quite right, but it's certainly proved pretty resistant to breaking. You might want to modify it a bit now e.g. add some TIP$ into the mix with the Gold. I'm not suggesting it's the right investment for anyone, but I have certainly found some very interesting things to consider in his writing.

Thanks for this - I'd be interested in more detail on the pitches, in particular Lanyon's. I've been very impressed with what I've read about them. It's good to find a Sydney person here - what a great city. I'm more a funds person than a stocks person, and there are clearly some great managers that don't seem well-known outside the country - I only recently came across EGP for example, and Forager seem very impressive (shame about the LIC premium). I've no doubt you know many more. Thanks again.

My head just exploded. Thank you!

Thanks for your answers. Amongst other things, I research funds and so am always curious to find out more about interesting people. John - your reply is interesting and gave me some food for thought i.e. separating frameworks, strategies etc. (I think we all may use different words for these things). Basically, I have read so many letters / reports etc. explaining how a manager believes in value, focus, the long-term etc. This gives an initial flavour of what to expect. But it's not until you see what a portfolio consists of, when things were bought/sold, rationalisations for why it was done, that you can start to make an evaluation. Perhaps to encapsulate, I believe that value investing can mean different things to different people, and so you have to look at what they do, as well as what they say. I remember the thread on the book, but hadn't connected it to Austin. Joel - I have very much appreciated your writing and ideas, particularly the pieces on Price and Returns, and holding Cash. Thank you. Cheers!

This is very cool and useful - I'm surprised nobody replied to your OP. Great of you to share it. Sadly I use LibreOffice and Excel add-ins don't work with it. C'est la vie.

This might be of interest: https://webb-site.com/articles/enigma.asp If you don't know him, he's a legend in HK corporate governance. Not long after he put this out, a load of the companies' share prices bombed. Again, not to say all Chinese companies with lots of subsidiaries are bad, but murky patterns of cross-holdings need to be checked.

Thanks - this is very interesting stuff and beautifully presented. Also, thanks for mentioning Braddock - I had no idea Akre had a L/S strategy. Couldn't find any details, though I presume there's a fair bit of overlap on the long side. He's a hero. And obviously I'm now fascinated to know more about Austin's strategy. @investmd Giverny, you've heard about, nothing to add, they're a great example of holding quality GARP. Arlington - they're closed to new money, the track record is insane, I wouldn't know how to describe them, but search this site for more info. Braddock - look up the Akre Focus mutual fund for details - more outstanding, long-term, quality GARP.

Ha - you and me both! Probably for about the past 4 years. Unfortunately I've still been overly cautious, which has cost me so far. I take your point about allocation - for me, I am happy to let them do the asset allocating for me, as they're far more clever than I am. But I basically see them as Cash & a bit. Would you consider a good Long/Short fund? City Financial AR's David Crawford has been pretty impressive over the years in terms of good, non-index-related returns - he seems to be a genuinely decent Shorter. I used to find the reporting a bit opaque, but it's got better recently. And if you can access them (the odd occasion seems to crop up), Ennismore, I think they rode out 2008 pretty well, though possibly not 2011, from memory.

I think you're UK-based? Are Investment Trusts ok for you to invest in? If so, how about one of the absolute return ones like CGT or PNL? I see them as usually doing better than cash, with low volatility, and pretty honest managers. You could probably add RICA in there as well, though I'm less convinced by it. If you don't mind adding to your EM exposure, you could look at one of the Vietnam ITs. It's not as cheap as it was a year or two ago, but not crazily expensive.

I'm not smart enough to pick stocks, but I spend a lot of time researching funds globally. I think Jurgis is right that not many people here do it, which is a shame, as I'd love to have more people to have nerdy fund discussions with. Having said that, 99% of funds are pointless, so it's a pretty ridiculous endeavour. Akre is great, though he's old, and I don't know what'll happen if he retires. Broadrun are similar (they're his old team) and do mandates and a mutual fund with Hennessy.

I've only had a skim-read of this, but it reminded me a little of this: http://www.oddballstocks.com/2017/01/homemade-economic-indicators.html "When I consider everything I'm seeing it's easy to say that we must be nearing a market top. But it was another two years from what I witnessed in 1999, 2006, and 2014 before the top finally blew off. Oddly I've been consistently two years early in noticing these trends, so maybe the bottom won't fall out until 2019?"

Lads, if you're still looking: https://anonymoosenotes.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/notes-on-brian-gaines-of-springhouse-capital-management/ btw - thanks for your big thread - it's been a fascinating read.

Susie Rippingall, Scottish Oriental Investment Trust Claire Barnes, Apollo Jenny Jones, Schroder US Mid and Small Caps Some of the best investors in the world are women. My personal take is that not many women go into fund management for the same reason I haven't - there are too many over-confident idiots around, and the decent, smart people mostly exist on the margins. This to me is the real issue, not gender.

The other factor mentioned has been that Amazon is coming for them, though I have no idea if this is just a rumour or is based on insider knowledge. Now you've just got to decide if it's time to buy the correction, or if this type of market volatility is a bad sign generally...

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but I'd say that Russell Napier's 'Anatomy of the Bear' might work.

I look forward to your write up on Investor. I have been intrigued by them for a while, as part of a bigger fascination with family holding companies (Exor, HAL Trust, Jardine etc.). My main problem is that I can't get a sense of how good the current generation of Wallenbergs are, and how plans for future succession is. Stewardship is so important. There was an interesting feature on Jacob, Peter & Marcus in the FT a couple of years ago. You can dodge the paywall if you google the headline. https://www.ft.com/content/4f407796-0a35-11e5-a6a8-00144feabdc0

I just finished this book, 'The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics' https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Moral-Compass-Global-History/dp/1612194834 which covers the stuff discussed in this topic, amongst many other things. I would definitely recommend it if you're interested in the background from different cultures and civilisations.

This doesn't surprise me. I think it reflects the way the industry is structured, even more than managers' talent or the fees. Most money managers don't really have the incentives to outperform (they still get paid as long as they 'fail conventionally'). Investors are to blame too - very few bother to learn about how investing works, and check fund prices too often. All this encourages benchmark-hugging. Sadly, new financial regulations (in Europe anyway) are making it even more onerous for smaller firms to start up, blocking future young talent. One good thing has been a new(-ish) wave of medium-sized, owner-managed mutual fund companies (usually star managers jumping ship to set up on their own) such as Fundsmith, Woodford and Lindsell Train who run relatively concentrated, off-benchmark, buy and hold portfolios. And let's remember, some managers can do it. People just need to do their homework to work out a checklist of where to look for them (e.g. they probably won't be at Fidelity).

He mainly writes in English these days, but yes he's a french speaker. I enjoy his irreverence.

I enjoyed it (though I need to go back over some interviews in more detail) - I like the format, and it was great to find out more about Canadian managers - I'm keen to learn more about good small-cap, non-resource managers. Given his lack of status, I thought he did pretty well in who he got. Obviously I'd have liked a Turtle Creek piece, but hey ho. I don't know if you read the MasterPenetrator blog, but he met up with Speziale for a night out and wrote it up.