Hello again!  It's been a while since my last post on Clear Eyes Investing and I appreciate your continued interest in the content. I'm starting a new writing platform on Substack called Flyover Stocks. You can subscribe to Flyover Stocks using the link below. We'll cover similar topics as we did here at Clear Eyes Investing, in addition to finding overlooked quality companies with economic moats led by thoughtful stewards of shareholder capital. I hope you'll come along for the ride. I'll keep the Clear Eyes Investing site active. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions o ..read more

Hi everyone, I recently joined Ensemble Capital as a senior investment analyst and will be contributing posts to Ensemble's excellent blog, Intrinsic Investing. Please bookmark Intrinsic Investing and follow us on Twitter (here) to see my future posts. Clear Eyes Investing will remain public if you want to read the archives. As always, thank you for following my writings both here and elsewhere! Stay patient, stay focused. Best, Todd ..read more

Whether or not you should meet with a company's management team is a debatable topic among fundamental investors. Those against meeting with management believe you can get what you need from the numbers and company filings. By speaking with management, you risk getting "captured" by a charismatic executive or misled by a sly one. These are all indeed risks to be aware of before meeting management. In my experience, speaking with business leaders across industries, company sizes, and geographies has been an education in itself. I've misread situations in the past, of course, but I've learned ..read more

One of the unexpected benefits of working overseas early in my career was learning about investors I probably wouldn't have come across until much later on. British investors like Nick Train, Neil Woodford, and Terry Smith, for example, have influenced my investment philosophy in some fashion. The subject of today's post, Anthony Bolton, also fits into this group. Bolton ran the Fidelity Special Situations Fund in the U.K. for 28 years ending December 2007, posting incredible annualized returns near 19.5% while at the helm.  Source: Excess Returns: A comparative study of the met ..read more

One night a few weeks ago, I sketched out my investment philosophy in a “one pager” format.  I found the process to be useful, so I shared it on Twitter before heading to bed, thinking others might give it a try themselves. Tried my hand at a one-pager of my investment philosophy. Nothing revolutionary, but an enjoyable exercise. pic.twitter.com/gEklvqr96a — Todd Wenning (@ToddWenning) September 1, 2017 In the morning, I discovered the post was going viral - at least FinTwit's version of viral.  The feedback on the post was overwhelmingly positive, which, while appreciated, al ..read more

In December, I wrote about the rare and powerful "moat and knight" combination - a company with a defensible competitive advantage led by top-notch capital allocators.  Since coming across that concept a few years ago, I've wrestled with the relative importance of the two factors. What's more important: moat or knight? In a recent post, my former office mate at Motley Fool UK, Maynard Paton (who you should follow), paralleled my current thoughts on the subject quite well: Years ago I used to believe that traditional business ‘moats’ — such as brands, patents, regulations, economies of ..read more

I recently heard a presentation by Paul Smith, the president of the CFA Institute. One of the data points he shared was that, among CFA Charterholders over the age of 50, about half had liberal arts undergraduate degrees. For those under 50, liberal arts degrees were just a small minority.* As one of those liberal arts Charterholders, I found this statistic troubling - but not at all surprising.   There are many reasons for this shift - more majors today, more specialization, etc. - but there's a massive opportunity for liberal arts majors to make an impact in the investing field today ..read more

One of my favorite Warren Buffett quotes is a lesser-known one. It comes from a transcribed conversation he had with University of Maryland MBA students back in 2013, where he was asked about Morningstar's work on economic moats.  Here's part of what he said: If you have a castle in capitalism, people are going to try to capture it. You need 2 things – a moat around the castle, and you need a knight in the castle who is trying to widen the moat around the castle.  Buffett disciples should be well familiar with his economic moat philosophy, but this was the first time I heard him use ..read more

After purchasing our house last year, I went onto the popular real estate site, Zillow, to register as the property's owner. Among other things, this allowed me to control and update the house's data on the site. It also provided me with weekly email updates of the house's "Zestimate" - Zillow's estimated home price forecast. Adding unnecessary emotions The first few emails showed higher Zestimates for my home. Up $3,000, up $2,000 - "Great!" I thought, "Looks like I paid a good price for the place." A few weeks later, I received an email telling me that the house price had gone down a ..read more

Men almost always walk in paths beaten by others and act by imitation. Though he cannot hold strictly to the ways of others or match the ability of those he imitates, a prudent man must always tread the path of great men and imitate those who have excelled, so that even if his ability does not match theirs, at least he will achieve some semblance of it. -- Machiavelli, The Prince Every discipline has its hall of heroes. Physicists hold up Einstein, Newton, and Hawking in great esteem. Artists revere the works of Picasso, Michelangelo, and Da Vinci. And basketball players grow up imitating Jord ..read more