Best Fund Managers

[investmd]

It looks like David Poppe took over or is at least heavily involved in Giverny now. Not sure which one it is. Didn't do too much digging.

 

Edit: The we got out of the fraud before it popped as opposed to the other guys isn't very confidence inspiring. Though I don't know what weight Giverny had in VRX.

 

François Rochon is still in charge there. He introduced David Poppe as a new partner at the last annuel meeting.

 

With Valeant he just managed the portfolio prudently, selling shares to not let it become a too big part of the portfolio contrarly to Sequoia. The more debt they took the more he reduced it.

 

The thing with Giverny is that they have compounded consistently at close to 15%. From 2010 to 2019 they outperformed the S&P500 by approx 4%/yr. From 2000 to 2009 they outperformed by close to 4%/yr. From inception to today, they have outperformed S&P500 by close to 4%/yr. That is a crazy good record. I wish I had discovered them earlier.

[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