Evaluating management in the investment process.

In this thread, I share some thoughts on the importance of management when investing.

I also share 10+ specific ways to analyze the quality of management:
First of all, is it even worth it to spend time evaluating management when investing?

Three downsides to emphasizing management in your investment process:

1. Difficult to separate pretenders from good management

2. Can increase confirmation bias

3. Information overload

This individual investor has made 8,000%+ returns over the last 25 years to build a $250 million portfolio.

The most surprising thing is that he has sent 1,000 letters to the government to close the loopholes that gave him his advantage.

Let's dive in! David Webb graduated in mathematics from Exeter College, Oxford University in 1986. He was a self-proclaimed “computer geek” who authored a couple books on programming and built a few games in the early 1980s.

He started his career as an investment banker in London.

An inside view of a $20 billion fund that you likely have never heard of: EdgePoint

We’ll review the fund’s strategy, a few of its actual stock pitches, and the current holdings in its portfolio.

We’ll also go over some of their biggest investment mistakes.

Let’s dive in! EdgePoint was founded in 2008 by Tye Bousada, Patrick Farmer, Bob Krembil and Geoff MacDonald.

It was a challenging time to start a fund given the global economic recession, but they managed to launch on November 4, 2008 with $234 million in assets under management.

There’s a $100 billion retail concept that has thrived despite threats from Amazon & e-commerce.

50,000 brick-and-mortar US stores are going to close over the next 5 years. But this concept is still growing!

Let’s dive into the business model + strategies driving their success: The retail concept is Off-Price Retailing.

TJX Companies ($TJX) and Ross Stores ($ROST) are the two biggest winners in the space with $50 billion and $20 billion in revenues, respectively.

Their stock prices have compounded at 15%+ over the last 20 years for a 2,000%+ return.

There’s a $13 billion fund that you likely have never heard of that has tripled the returns of the average hedge fund over the last 20 years.

The most surprising thing is that their investment strategy involves buying and selling the same few hundred stocks.

Let’s dive in! Greg Poole founded Echo Street Capital in 2002 at the age of 28 with less than $10 million in assets under management.

Echo Street manages $13 billion as of June 2023.

It’s a fascinating story of learning and continuously improving one’s investment process.

Danaher used DBS to build a $200 billion company and generate a 45x return.

Billionaire investor Dan Loeb believes studying Danaher is worth more than a 2-year MBA.

In this thread, we’ll dive into the actual tools & tactics behind their success - Danaher Business System (DBS): Before jumping in, if you haven’t seen my last thread (pinned on my page), I recommend you review it to get an overview of Danaher.

In this thread, we’ll deconstruct the playbooks used to build this $200 billion company.

As far as I know, DBS has never been studied like this!

Billionaire investor Dan Loeb believes studying this one company is worth more than a 2-year MBA.

Surprisingly, it isn’t Amazon, Apple, or Berkshire Hathaway.

As one of the all-time best-performing stocks, it’s delivered 4,500%+ returns over the last 25 years.

Let’s dive in! The company is Danaher and the secret to its success is the Danaher Business System (DBS).

In this thread, I’ll give you an overview of Danaher, DBS, and their M&A strategy.

Let’s start with Danaher’s history! $DHR