Best Fund Managers

[Coleman]

Morgan Stanley Global Franchise Fund

BBH Partner Fund - International Equity

[coc]

Akre is a wonderful money manager who has been performing well since 1989 - and has a repeatable, scalable process. I don't feel he's anything like Ken Heebner, who went all in on energy stocks and tanked.

 

The problem with Akre are problems faced with all good money managers:

 

(1) I believe he's in his late 70s, so you ought to believe his team is as good as he's been. Sequoia shows how tough that can be (not to knock them - for all I know that team is brilliant - just commenting on histoy)

 

(2) He's managing over $15 billion now, orders of magnitude harder than $500M, or $1 or $2 billion he built his reputation with.

 

(3) The stocks he built his reputation on were growing at 15-20% and trading at 10-20x earnings. These now trade at 30-50x earnings. AMT, MA/V, CSGP, ADBE, ROP, CSU, etc. Wonderful companies, which will keep him from blowing up, but all high priced. (Not his fault - simply what the environment has on tap).

 

The probability of getting future returns of 15-20% simply must be nil. But you might get 10% and that's pretty good.

 

Giverny is great - Francois should keep doing well. He ought not to be reporting performance figures from his personal accounts in the 90s but even when you scrub that away his edge is still there. And it's scalable. The worst problem will be if he takes too much money, which so many eventually do.

 

Ackman is a genius who can't seem to remember his limits. That would always scare me.

[LanceSanity]

Perceptive Advisors has done 30% annually net of fees for about 20 years, with only 2 down years: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b19hj4gjrwh1x9/The-41-Man