My portfolio of top capital allocators

[John Hjorth]

... Another huge benefit of your 20% allocation, you have chosen to free up 20% of disposable time for something else that may be a passion. Who knows, your 20% will do so well that you will pursue your passion 100% of the time. 

+1!

[Nicholas]

I would love to hear your thoughts on a portfolio I'm building.

My goal for this portfolio, which is about 20% of my total invested assets, is to invest in the absolute best capital allocators/investors, and hold on to them for at least the next decade or two.

This will be my main growth engine for the total portfolio, while the rest is mostly index stock/bonds based.

 

My current picks are:

BRK.B - Berkshire Hathaway

MKL - Markel Corporation

FFH.TO - Fairfax Financial

PSH.AS - Pershing Square Holdings

TPOU.L - Third Point Offshore

IEP - Icahn Enterprises

BAM - Brookfield Asset Management

HHC - Howard Hughes

 

I plan to have them equally weighted (except maybe HHC, since it's related to PSH) and re-balance as the prices of each become more attractive.

 

I've also considered many others, which for now I think I'll leave out:

Y, WTM, WRB, LRE - all probably good insurers, but don't have great investors running the show.

GLRE, TPRE - I don't like the added uncertainty of the reinsurance business (at least with MKL, FFH the business is solid). I would much prefer to invest directly with the investors (it's possible with Loeb, but not with Einhorn).

L, LUK - both were great in the past but have severe management issues today. P/B is very attractive but I'm not looking for value/speculation in this segment of my portfolio, but to invest with the best of the best, so I'm leaving these two out.

 

Others I'm still considering

SIGB.L

CRS.L

RCP.L

BH

POW.TO

SPLP

HRG

LMCA

BVT

SHLD

OAK

FRMO

and whole bunch of others, but I'll cut off here.

 

I think my main questions are:

- Are my top picks solid? Do you think something is critically missing and should be removed?

- Which companies can serve my goal besides the ones in my top picks (I'm considering adding a bunch of 2nd tier companies which might fit this criteria with a smaller stake for each).

- Do you think these companies are worthy of holding for a decade or two? I don't want to switch/monitor them all the time.

 

Adam,

 

I'm currently going through a similar exercise myself...so it's great to read your post.

 

It's interesting, FFH, BRK and MKL are all business that are predicated on the write insurance premiums and invest the excess float (that doesn't have to be reserved for prudential/payout requirements) model - ie get access to capital at low cost. I was reading something by Buffett the other day that highlighted, in his words, that not all Insurance businesses are actually able to write insurance premiums at a sufficient premium that ensure a float exists - he explicitly stated that he believed that GEICO was great at doing this...two thoughts going round in my mind:-

1) "are FFH and MKL able to sustain insurance returns and thereby give themeselves access to the float better than BRK/GEICO can?"...

2) Putting Point 1) aside, who out of FFH, BRK and MKL have better underlying operational longer term businesses that they have invested in? I don't know the answer to this....and would welcome thoughts.

 

Even though Buffett is getting old, I'm getting the feeling that I'd rather overweight towards BRK rather than FFH /MKL.

 

I'm also looking at GBLB - Groupe Bruxelles Lambert & HCHC (Phil Falcone ) -although I'm a little uncomftable about the debt position of HCHC (high)