Scott Sheppard
January 10, 2022
Weekly updateTactical Growth Mandate - Weekly Briefing
In the 1986 annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett coined the phrase “be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy only when others are fearful”. He was making reference to the fact that in that period he was finding few, if any, companies that met his criteria for buying.
Buffett would caution that buying a wonderful company was only part of the equation. Value comes from buying a wonderful company for a price below its intrinsic business value.
Over the past few years, investors have been chasing growth names, meme stocks, and crypto currencies (not all reputable). It’s been fascinating to watch how fast money flowed into these names. I’ve seen investors spend more time researching a new iPhone than spending time researching a growth stock on the NASDAQ before deciding to put $100,000 into it.
It recently dawned on me… I can’t remember the last time anyone has asked me about a Price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, or any other valuation metric for that matter. This is somewhat troubling to me as I recently read and confirmed that the last 5 years have seen high P/E “growth” stocks outperform low P/E “value” stocks by more than they did in the Dot.com era.
With the Federal Reserve about to remove accommodation in the U.S. and Omicron still spreading, I see conditions as fragile. Will this time be different for high risk/speculation investing? History suggests this won’t be the case.