Recently on my secondary YouTube channel called Joseph Carlson
After Hours, I came out with a two-part video series where I
reviewed the portfolios of legendary investors, Super
investors and these videos got quite a bit of views, over
100,000 views combined for videos that are 40 minutes long.
That's a lot of views for that length of a video.
I think the reason that people love this type of video is
because you get to see an inside look of what these type of
investors are doing, what's potentially going through their
mind as they're buying these different companies.
And on the list of investors I reviewed, we had people like
Terry Smith, Chuck Akri, we had Bill Ackman, Bill Gates, we had
Warren Buffett and so on and so forth, all of the legendary
investors. Now, I'm no super investor.
I'm not managing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars,
but I do have a portfolio of my own that I do manage and I've
been able to learn quite a bit from these type of investors
over the years studying their habits, seeing what type of
companies they look for and what type of qualities.
And what I would like to do is do the same type of review but
for My Portfolio, an indepth critical review of the companies
that I own and an explanation of why I own them.
So we're going to be going through every single holding in
My Portfolio and I'll be explaining the thesis behind
each of them. So we have a lot to get to.
Let's go ahead and jump right in.
One thing that I decided to do when I was looking at My
Portfolio was an idea that I got from Terry Smith.
Terry Smith runs a portfolio called the Fund Smith Portfolio
and every year he releases an annual letter giving an update
to the investors and Fund Smith. Of course he gives out the
returns, which he's had very strong returns for a good period
of time. But there's one part of this
report that I think is really cool, something that I see
that's pretty unique to Terry Smith.
He created this table called the Look through table.
What he did was he looked at each company, he weighted them
for the entire portfolio and then he compares his portfolio
weighted towards the entire S&P 500.
That way it's as if his portfolio is like an index being
compared against the S&P 500 index and you get to see these
averages overtime. Now Terry Smith did this for a
lot of profitability metrics, but I wanted to do the same
thing. I created the Joseph Carlson
look through table. I compared every single one of
my companies on a weighted average compared against the
SP500. But instead of doing it on
profitability metrics, I did it on the growth rate and the
valuation of My Portfolio. So the average growth rate of
the free cash flow per share over the past five years, that's
what you see in this column. Then we have that compared
against the SP500S average. I was able to find this number
through access to someone that had a Bloomberg Terminal.
So that's as accurate as I could find.
Now we also have the free cash flow yield of everyone of my
companies, the average weighted of it compared against the
SP500S and I've done the same for the five year earnings per
share growth and the Ford P/E. So this gives us a bit of an
overview of how My Portfolio in terms of growth rate and
valuation stacks up against the benchmark index.
Now before we jump into the first one here, which is SP
Global, I want to share one important note what I recommend
for every individual investor. If you're getting started out
investing, I would first recommend to buy an index fund,
specifically an ETF that tracks an index fund.
The S&P 500 is an incredibly good ETF.
It is very difficult to beat and you should only try to
outperform it if you've been investing for a good amount of
time and if you're willing to take on that additional risk of
outperforming the S&P 500 for the majority of people, having
the majority of your portfolio and a broadly diversified index
fund is a very good route to go. And then if you see some
companies individually that you think are particularly good buys
at different points in time, you can add that to your portfolio
with the ETF as well. That hybrid strategy works
really well. The reason that I do a full
portfolio of individual stocks is because I'm looking at this
stuff all day. I spend a lot more time than the
average person. But with that said, let's go
ahead and jump in with my largest holding here, which is
SP Global. This one makes up currently 15%
of the portfolio in My Portfolio.
I have SP Global in the financial category, but that
category may not be entirely accurate.
It's true that SP Global deals with the world of finance in a
huge way, but really what this company is, is a data company.
It's a tech company. A lot of people don't view this
company as a high tech data company because it's been around
for a long period of time. And I think it's a big mistake
to assume that companies that have been around for a long
period of time aren't using Cuttingedge technology and data.
The first thing that I think is important to note is the various
businesses that S&P Global operates in.
This is straight from their website and this is a breakdown
of the products they sell. The first one that they're most
notable for is the ratings business.
You think back in 2009 how the rating agencies got it wrong.
That was S&P Global and Moody. They got the credit ratings for
mortgage-backed securities incorrect.
But while a lot of people vaguely know them, for the
mortgage-backed securities, these companies rate a lot of
different products. If any large institution wants
to invest in a fund or a specific company, they will
typically need a credit rating for that business.
Almost all of them have requirements for ratings
associated with businesses. For example, if Walmart wanted
to buy a private company, they would request that Moody's or
SMP Global give that company a rating in terms of its ESG, its
governance, and its credibility before making that investment.
It is a requirement for the huge majority of large institutions.
So these ratings play a critical role in the functioning of the
markets. If you're bullish on the credit
markets growing overtime, you're bullish on ratings.
The second part of S&P Global's business is the largest portion
of the business. They are a data company
providing data about market indices and financials and
markets in general. They have a product called the
S&P Capital IQ Pro. Now this works similar to a
Bloomberg Terminal. It's something that large
institutions can pay for and they get access to 10s of
thousands of data points. They also license this data.
They sell it in bulk. They have tons of different
customers using this data. The majority of large websites
you see providing you data, like Yahoo Finance, are using SMP
Global. They are totally reliant on SMP
Global. The reason that SMP Global is so
big in this data category is they have by far the most
reliable, most validated data of any provider.
They're the only one with a guarantee that the data is
correct and they will literally pay you if you find flaws in
their data. So if you're bullish on the
overall trends of data becoming important in markets of more and
more people wanting financial data, you're bullish on this
aspect of S&P Global. S&P Global's third business is
the S&P Global Indices business. They also own the name S&P and
the Dow Jones Indexes that come along with it.
So popular ETF's like Schwab that have S CHD that one's based
on the Dow Jones Dividend 100 Index.
That is an S&P Global Index, meaning everyone that invests in
SCHD is paying a tiny bit of capital to SP Global.
Everyone that invests in the SP500 is paying a tiny bit of
capital to SP Global. Now the next business that SP
Global has is providing indepth detail about commodities.
They call this the Platts business.
They include markets like oil, natural gas, LNG, electric,
power, coal, shipping, petrochemicals, metal,
agricultural. Now commodities in and of
themselves are very volatile, but the business that S&P Global
has, which is providing data and information and pricing about
commodities is far less volatile than the commodities themselves.
This is another stream of a growing market of data and
licensing that they generate every single year.
What this amounts to is a business of markets.
And P Global focuses beginning to end on markets and their
diversified business. High margins and consistent
growth make this the perfect combination for me.
I really like the outlook of this company.
I like the secular growth trends and I like the fact that I think
that it's very resilient. This is going to be a very
difficult one for others to compete with.
Now looking past the qualities of the company, we can look at
some of the fundamentals here. SMB Global is a rare company
that looks like it's a lot more expensive than it actually is.
The free cash flow yield right now is 2.46% if you factor in
stock based comp and that looks pretty expensive.
But on the spreadsheet here, I have the free cash flow yield at
3.4%. So why is there a discrepancy
between what Qualtram is saying and what the spreadsheet is
saying? The reason why is because S&P
Global recently just went through a major acquisition
which is throwing off these trailing numbers a little bit.
And if we look at it on an annual basis, they are guiding
for $4.3 billion in free cash flow in 2023.
So it'll be right around here a huge upwards movement in their
free cash flow. And if you factor in $4.3
billion in free cash flow for a market cap of 124 billion,
that's where you get the free cash flow yield of 3.4%.
And a free cash flow yield of 3.4% doesn't seem all that bad,
especially because right now the S&P 500 has a free cash flow
yield of 3.6%. So it's right there, almost in
line with the S&P 500 and terms of valuation.
But when I look at S&P Global, I ask my itself, can this company
grow its free cash flow faster than the SP500?
I think the answer to that is yes.
I think the company will grow free cash flow per share on a
much faster and more consistent basis than the SP500.
Now, there's always a chance something could go wrong with
any business, but this is 1 where I believe the risk reward
is really good. Now my second largest position
currently is MasterCard at a 13% weighting of my overall
portfolio and you might notice some similarities here.
Master Card is another very old company.
It was founded in the 1960s and I believe that makes investors
view it with a different light. It may not have the same
attention paid to it as newer companies like PayPal and Block,
but I believe Master Card and Visa for that matter are
superior businesses. Looking at Master Cards
financials, it's easy to tell that this is a superior business
to almost every other company in the market and every bit of
economics shows the same thing. Growing EBITDA, growing earnings
per share, growing net income, All of these are growing above
10% per year, which is incredibly strong growth for
such a long period of time. The free cash flow mimics the
rest of the financials as well, but the free cash flow is
growing even faster because of their incredibly high free cash
flow conversion. Out of the revenue this company
generates, roughly half of that goes to free cash flow.
Because of the efficiency of this business, they can
continually reinvest back into their company through buybacks,
growing their earnings per share faster and growing their free
cash flow on a per share at a much faster rate, 17% over the
past decade and then it's not slowing down.
The past two years, it's 26%. In the past one year it's 19%.
That is astronomically high. This is higher than most tech
startups are growing their free cash flow on a per share basis.
So yes, MasterCard does trade at a little bit of a premium, a
lower free cash flow yield than the market.
The free cash flow yield is 2.7%.
But the growth rate of these cash flows has also been double.
The markets average 17% against 8% and I believe that this
growth rate is sustainable for at least the next five years.
So I still believe that MasterCard is undervalued
compared against the SP500. Now the third largest holding in
My Portfolio is Vici with an 11% waiting.
Vici is the only company in my real estate category and this
one's been beat up this year. Investors have been selling out
of Reit's generally speaking because there's a lot of fare
currently surrounding real estate.
We see article after article comparing real estate back to
2009. Institutions are positioning
less and less money in Reit's this year compared to the past
10 years. So we see some selling going on
with Vici and other real estate investment trusts.
Vici has collected 100% of rents from every tenant since
inception of the company. So even though this company's
price trades around frequently, the amount of cash flow that it
generates has been incredibly consistent and growing at a
decent pace. Since the start, the average
annual increase in dividends has averaged around 8 to 9%, and
I've projected that into the future.
When I was originally looking at investing in Vici, I put
together some assumptions of my real downside over the next 10
years and the upside with the business.
Here's a table that I threw together that shows, based on
the amount of shares that I've purchased and the price that
I've paid for them, the amount of money that I'm getting every
single year in dividends. And then I make the assumption
that they'll be able to increase the amount of dividends they pay
by around 8% per year. Now that seems a little lofty,
but I really believe they can do this.
This is what the management is guiding for.
And VG does have large rent increases baked into their
contracts. The rental increases make up for
a good portion of that annual dividend increase.
With any new additional properties purchased, they can
make up for the remainder of it. Now based on the amount that I
invested and the price I bought this company, if they grow their
dividends 8% per year, I will be paid back in full in 2034.
So year 10, that's when I get paid back in full and that also
assumes no reinvestment of dividends.
If I reinvested the dividends back into the company, the
payback would be significantly sooner.
Now the dividend is only one way that Vici will give returns.
They're aiming for 12% compound annual returns, which if they
accomplish that 12% annualized return, my payback period goes
from 10 years to around 5:00 to 7:00, which is a very attractive
return. Now since Reit's don't really
have free cash flow like a normal company, the way that I
judge the free cash flow was the AFFO of the company.
So the five year free cash flow per share growth of Vici is
really the five year AFFO per share growth of the company
which so far has been 12%. That is very fast for a levered
business like Vici. Then we have the free cash flow
yield of Vici. I took this by taking the A FFO
and dividing it by the total market cap of the company.
And since this company sits at such an incredibly low
valuation, the a FFO yield of the company is 7%, nearly double
what the market is. So I still think that Vici is an
attractive investment. It sits at a very low valuation.
It has very reasonable growth assumptions.
I feel that I have lower downside with this company
because it offers real cash flow to investors.
But I think investors in Vici are going to need to be patient.
If interest rates keep rising making treasury bills more
attractive, that's going to put downward pressure on Vici's
stock overtime. The cash flows of Vici will win
out. The next two companies in My
Portfolio are Microsoft and Apple.
These two big tech juggernauts each take up roughly 10% each.
So that's a combined 20% into each of these companies.
Now the interesting thing is what you hear about Apple
continually is that the company's not growing.
It's too big, it's too bloated, They can't really grow past
their current size. I heard those same type of
things being talked about when Apple first hit a trillion
dollar market cap and Apple went to two trillion much faster than
it went to the first trillion. The growth has been phenomenal
for Apple and if we look at the five year compound annual growth
rate of Apple, it is one of the highest in my entire portfolio
over the past five years, an astounding 23% free cash flow
per share growth. When I look at Apple, it almost
seems impossible for a company to grow that quickly, but that
is what the numbers show. The free cash flow per share has
exploded to the upside by a combination of the company being
at historically low valuations, having tremendous amounts of
free cash flow and doing a tremendous amount of buybacks as
well. Apple loves to buy back as many
shares as they can. So as the shares outstanding go
down continually, the amount of free cash flow per share and
earnings per share continue to grow.
Now even to this day, when I look at Apple and the valuation
it trades at, people say it's a little bit overvalued.
The company trades at a higher P/E ratio than the rest of the
market and that's true. It's at a 25 compared to the
markets 20, but it's also growing in earnings much faster
than the market. It's also growing its free cash
flow much faster than the market.
And in terms of the free cash flow yield, Apple is identical
to the market currently. So whether or not you think this
company can continue to grow as a judgment you'll have to make.
What I believe is that Apple continues to have the strongest
smoke in the market. I think the company has a grasp
on the high end consumer of Western Civilization.
I think they're in one of the most enviable positions now with
Microsoft. This one is very simple.
Microsoft has been one of the easiest plays in the market for
the past 10 years. It's continually one of the most
reliable tech companies. Over 80% of the revenue they
earn is subscription based. So this is a company that right
now trades out a lofty valuation.
I'm not buying into Microsoft right now, but based on the
fundamentals, it's one that I continue to hold.
I still continue to believe that Microsoft and Apple will
outperform the market over the next 5 to 10 years, and I
believe that most investors selling them today because of
one reason or another are going to regret that eventually.
They still have incredible moats and unless that market position
changes of them having this significant of a Moat, I'm not
selling now. The six biggest holding in My
Portfolio with a 9% waiting is Costco.
This is a surprisingly large holding for My Portfolio, and
notably, I haven't been purchasing Costco at all
recently. In fact, I haven't bought this
company for quite some time. It just seems like it's always
hanging around in My Portfolio doing its thing on its own, but
the returns have been attractive for my Costco investment.
I'm up currently over $10,000 on the company and this is a
company that I've been in love with for a long period of time.
Costco is a fantastic company. They treat their customers well,
they treat their employees well, they treat their community well.
They offer substantial value to every party involved in every
transaction. I believe they have the most
loyal shoppers of any retailer. There's people that talk about
the virtues of Dollar General and Target and Ulta and all
different retailers. But every time I do analysis on
one or the other, I come back to Costco.
I believe it is superior to other retailers.
And there are specific reasons that Costco is superior.
Reason #1. Costco is a subscription
business model. When you look at the revenue of
Costco, you can see it over time and it's growing.
And the revenue has everything included.
You have every bit of grocery, you have all the hard goods they
sell, you have their tire services.
You have everything that Costco does which combines the revenue,
but there's a very important part of their revenue which is
their membership subscription. When you shop at Costco, you
have to have a membership. That membership brings in
stability to their earnings. The way that Costco prices
everything is they basically run their warehouse at break even
and then they make the money, the real earnings on their
subscription service. So Costco really is a
subscription economic model in the venue of retail.
That's the avenue they're doing it.
But this brings in a very different business model than
the likes of Target or even Walmart that are not
subscription based. And those companies are far more
reliant on the fluctuating price of grocery.
Costco's not reliant on the fluctuating price of grocery.
That stability and lack of volatility is a result of their
membership model. Another thing that I've been
highlighting with Costco compared to other retailers is
this growing trend of blatant theft in different retailers.
We have many of them in lots of different places now where it's
becoming commonplace to run into a grocery store, fill your cart
with whatever you want and leave not paying for it.
Crime is becoming rampant and there's even organized crime
taking place. Target on their earnings call
said that organized crime has gone up 120% over the past year.
That's the increase in theft. They are now expected to lose
over $1.3 billion in theft that year.
That's what targets dealing with $1.3 billion in theft is a
massive amount of targets. Bottom line, that's money that
could be dividend back to the investor, but instead that's
going into the hands of thieves. Costco, on the other hand, said
that in their earnings call, at least the most recent one, that
they have seen no increase in shrinkage or another term for
theft. In fact, it's remained very
stable throughout the entire past year.
They own privately all of the land in which they build on that
gives them extra rights and lots of different jurisdictions in
their warehouses which are privately owned and membership
based. It's more difficult to get in
and start shopping. The items in Costco are bulkier,
more difficult to sneak out, and there's only one entrance and
one exit with every receipt being checked.
So even though there is theft that takes place in every
retailer across the world, including Costco, the rates of
theft are much lower at Costco than other retailers.
And then finally, another thing that I think is worth mentioning
when comparing Costco to other retailers or other companies is
the success they've had internationally.
A lot of companies have failed going to Canada from the US
They're going to Europe from the US Target struggled with this
and other retailers have struggled with this.
Costco really hasn't. So far they've had widespread
success spreading across the world and they have 25 new
location openings every single year.
When I map this out and forecasted the future, assuming
that they open up 25 additional locations, a flat amount every
single year and they grow their same store sales 7% per year,
which is completely in line with their longterm history, We get
substantial growth over the next 10 years.
The revenues go from 231 billion to 589 billion.
That is over doubling of the revenue not including their
subscriptions. With this type of economic
growth and outlook, I believe it justifies the current valuation.
So even though Costco is continually one of those
companies that optically looks more expensive than its
competitors, there's a lot of nuance and context and reason
why Costco trades at a higher valuation than something like
Dollar General. The reason why is it's a Better
Business with a more predictable growth path.
Now in #7, we have Texas Roadhouse making up 9% of the
portfolio. Texas Roadhouse is another
company that I really enjoy, the actual company, what they do,
how they treat people and what they do for their communities.
I think this is just another well-rounded great company.
When I look at the restaurant industry, which I've been
studying and looking at for a long period of time, I look at
all the competitors to Texas Roadhouse and I see a lot of
them falling off. They're just not doing that
well. We have Cracker Barrel, for
example. We look at Cracker Barrels
revenue over the past 10 years, it's been growing at a snail's
pace, 2.14% per year, which is around or below the level of
inflation, meaning that Cracker Barrels growth is essentially
stopped. It's really not growing anymore.
And this means that other companies are taking market
share. Texas Roadhouse, on the other
hand, I think has been on top of consumer behavior, on pricing,
on value, on atmosphere, on theming in their restaurant and
everything. Altogether, the company offers a
very good value proposition for the customer.
And that value proposition and the attractiveness this company
has from customers has been shown in their operating metrics
over the past decade. They're not growing at 2% like
Cracker Barrel. They're taking market share and
growing at 12% revenue year over year.
In the past five years, it's been closer to 13%.
With that growth, they have a high amount of profitability
given the industry that they operate in.
They have best in class operating metrics.
The free cash flow has grown substantially and the free cash
flow per share is growing because they're also doing
buybacks while paying a dividend.
Texas Roadhouse for me is a very simple investment.
It's beating out the competitors.
It has a better recipe for success.
It's grown historically faster than the S&P 500.
When I purchased the company, it was at a better valuation.
Right now, it's slightly more expensive than the S&P 500 while
growing at a much faster rate. And in terms of earnings per
share, it actually matches the price of the S&P 500 while
having significantly faster growth.
I've also looked at underwriting different scenarios for Texas
Roadhouse with their unit growth and their unit economics per
location. I mapped out that they would
grow their new locations by 4% year over year.
That's a pretty reasonable conservative growth rate in
locations. That means that in 10 years
they'll go from their current 709 locations to 1048 and
they've already estimated that they're going to grow
continually at that 4% rate. Now if we have 7% same store
sales, which they've been beating consistently year after
year, that means that the revenue will roughly triple over
the next 10 years going from 4.7 billion to 13.8 billion.
Put simply, I believe this company is going to generate a
much higher amount of free cash flow and earnings per share over
the next 10 years. Now a #8 in My Portfolio, we
have Intuit, which is still at a very meaningful holding size, 8%
of the overall portfolio. When I look at Intuit, I see a
highly diversified high quality tech growth company.
This one I think is often overlooked by retail investors
because the segments that they operate in are not exciting.
But if you're an investor, you shouldn't be looking for
excitement, you should be looking for reliable, stable
growth for a long runway of time.
They have been dominant in the position of tax for a long
period of time. They've been dominant in the
position of small business accounting and they're growing
into different customer management tools.
For smaller businesses, Intuit is going to grow their free cash
flow per share at roughly 15% or more over the next five years.
I also think that they're going to have above market earnings
per share growth. And no, I'm not concerned about
the government created tax software for those users.
Intuit already has a free version of tax software.
Many people use it already and that's not something that's ever
been a real threat to them. Now #9 and 10, we have two
railroad companies, Canadian Pacific and Union Pacific, a 5%
waiting and 4% waiting. Both of these companies are very
similar in their risk factors and economic model.
What we can see is they're different by their growth rates.
Canadian Pacific has higher operating margins across the
board. It's had better execution and
therefore it's grown its free cash flow per share at a much
faster rate. Both of these, however, trade at
an attractive valuation compared against the SP500.
Railroads really haven't had too much of a bid this year.
They've been underperformers because so many people are
concerned about the growing chance of recession and the
downward pressure that would have on these companies
earnings. Now I believe these companies
will generate meaningful profits for a long period of time.
So I'm not too concerned about an upcoming recession.
Both of these companies are what I would describe as bulletproof.
They're near impossible to compete with and they have very
good economic models. Now finally holding #11, which
is the most recent one to the portfolio, we have Chipotle.
This one is at a 4% waiting. I have Chipotle in the
restaurant category with Texas Roadhouse.
Now one thing I'll mention is Chipotle is in the red right now
by around 7% or $1000 for $20,000 position.
And this is something that I don't find surprising at all.
I don't know of many companies, especially restaurants that I
initially buy into that are instantly in the green.
In fact, almost everyone that I buy is in the red at some point.
This was the same with Starbucks.
I bought Starbucks, it went into the red, and then it went
heavily into the green and I sold it at a profit.
This was the same with Texas Roadhouse.
When I originally bought Texas Roadhouse, it quickly went in
the red. Over enough time it went heavily
in the green and it's been an out performer.
So I'm not concerned about the immediate trading After opening
a new position. I expect that Chipotle could
trade further in the red if we get more gloomy economic news,
but Chipotle is a great company. It has incredibly good.
In fact, it has almost the best unit economics out of the entire
restaurant industry. It's very strong on a per unit
basis. When I mapped out the next 10
years of Chipotle in this scenario, I looked at the
restaurant openings they can have every single year.
Chipotle is targeting opening up 8% new restaurants every year
over the next 10 years. That brings them from their
current 3450 restaurants to 7450.
So the restaurants are roughly doubling, which is in line with
management's own expectations. Now, if they grow their same
restaurant sales by roughly 7% per year, which is very
conservative, very reasonable, that means that the company
could quadruple their revenue over the next 10 years.
Now, what exactly would Chipotle be worth if their revenue
quadrupled over the next 10 years?
Less difficult to say. How much free cash flow would
they generate if their revenue quadrupled over the next 10
years? Again, estimates will vary, but
what I can say is I believe it will be worth significantly more
than it is today. Now that makes up my entire
portfolio. That is why I own these
companies. It's not because I am timing the
market or I think they're going to have some upswing in the
coming months. The reason I hold each and
everyone of these companies is I believe they're going to be much
more profitable on a per share basis with both their earnings
power and their free cash flow. That profitability will
translate into gains. And whether or not the market
goes up or down, it doesn't really matter.
What matters is I hang on to these companies and let them
compound into the foreseeable future.
Now when we stack up My Portfolio against the benchmark
average, which is always the S&P 500 that is the standard that
essentially every money manager uses, we can see how this looks
together. My Portfolio in combination has
an average weighted compound annual growth rate of the free
cash flow per share of 17%. That is over double the average
of the SP500. So when people say that My
Portfolio is full of expensive companies or ones that are
trading a little bit higher, you got to put that in context.
If the companies are growing their economic value at a
substantially higher rate than the benchmark average, then you
should expect the valuations to be slightly higher.
Now in this case, that's not actually what's happening here.
When we look at my weighted average free cash flow yield of
every one of my companies and when we compare that against the
free cash flow yield of the S&P 500, My Portfolio is slightly,
slightly more expensive on a yield basis than the S&P 500.
And in my opinion, when I put these two numbers together, I
would rather take the portfolio that's a slightly higher
valuation but growing at a much more rapid pace.
The assumption here is if you believe that the S&P 500 will
outperform My Portfolio, the growth rate of My Portfolio
would have to slow down dramatically and the growth rate
of the S&P 500 would have to speed up.
That would make me underperform. But I don't believe that that's
going to happen. Then we look at the earnings
basis, the earnings of the S&P 500 have grown anywhere from 8
to 12% over the past 30 years. In the past five years, it's
actually been very strong earnings growth around 12%.
But My Portfolio in combination weighted for each holding is
around 17%. So it's still growing its
earnings at a much faster rate. Those extra percentages really
do compound earnings really fast over a longer period of time.
Again, the assumption you would have to make so that I don't
outperform the SP500 is that My Portfolio slows down its
earnings growth dramatically. That is the big risk with
investing in these companies. If their earnings growth slows
down or their free cash flow per share growth slows down, then I
will underperform the SP500. But if My Portfolio continues to
grow both its earnings and its free cash flow per share at a
rate relatively higher than the SP500, it's only a matter of
time until this basket of stocks outperforms the broader market.
Now, of course, I can't say with certainty that I'll outperform.
There's no way of knowing the future and it's anyone's best
guess, but I do have a couple advantages here.
The first advantage is that I don't have any type of expense
ratio. Most hedge funds that
underperform the market largely do so because they charge a lot
of fees. There's no fees with investing
in these companies. I'm paying no transactional fees
and I'm paying no hedge fund fees.
This is my own portfolio, so the gains that I make are pure
gains. The next advantage I have is a
very long holding period. I'm not managing anyone else's
money, so I'm not pressured to sell any company.
I can simply hold these companies for five to 10 years
and only trade them out for a different company if I believe
it's a more compelling investment.
So the lack of fees associated with this portfolio and the long
holding time I believe gives me a distinct advantage that many
fund managers, for example, don't have.
But either way, whether I outperform or underperform, I
think it will do fine. And the important thing here is
sticking to the strategy. Where investors really get in
trouble and really underperform is paying attention to all the
doomsday news and letting that determine and influence their
investing strategy. So whether you're investing in
individual stocks or ETF's, be sure to stick to whatever
strategy you've laid out and don't let gloomy news or scary
news convince you otherwise. Now that's a full overview of My
Portfolio. If you want additional content,
be sure to check out the Patreon.
Other than that, I'll see you in the next one.