Chris Hohn argues that you can find a company with a monopoly market share, incredible assets, and theoretical cash flow, but if management views themselves as "totally unaccountable to the wider base" and engages in related-party transactions, the intrinsic value is effectively zero for the minority shareholder. Elite businesses are those where cash flow actually reaches the minority shareholder.
Switzerland is one of the best equity markets, with a 100-year track record.
No Big Tech. No oil. No coastline. No empire. Not even a president.
When comparing apples to apples (i.e., the weak USD and strong CHF), it even outperforms the S&P 500 over this period.
Every Swiss company starts the year at -2% due to having the world’s strongest currency.
Yet, alongside Germany and Austria, you’ll find a country with the most “hidden champions” (small market leaders) and all the reasons and qualities that explain why Swiss people, alongside the Japanese, have the longest life expectancy.
Read my trilogy, now available!
126 years of market history tell a simple story...
Stocks and earnings move together with a 98% correlation.
The short run is all about noise.
The long run is all about profits.
Speculators chase noise. Investors follow profits.
Milton Friedman on 4 ways to spend money:
1) Your money on yourself (you’re careful about both cost and quality)
2) Your money on others (you care about cost, less about quality)
3) Someone else’s money on yourself (you care about quality, not cost)
4) Someone else’s money on others (you care about neither)
The last one is how government spending works.
James Cameron: "In Star Wars the good guys are the rebels, they're using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized empire, I think we call those guys terrorists today."
George Lucas: "When I did it they were Vietcong. That was the whole point."