Barry Schwartz's Top Picks: March 3, 2022
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Top picks from Barry Schwartz, chief investment officer and portfolio manager, Baskin Wealth Management
MARKET OUTLOOK:
There are lots of things we, as professional investors, cannot control. We cannot make Russia behave, although we wish we could. We cannot make the economy stronger, although it seems to be doing that by itself. We cannot control the rate at which the central banks increase interest rates, although the decisions they make will affect all capital markets profoundly. So, what can we do and what matters about what we do?
Our job is to find good companies in which to invest our clients’ assets. We do this by way of constant research into new names, constant monitoring of the names we already own, and constant reading of the financial press to understand what is going on in the market in order to find new themes and new ideas.
Warren Buffett says he spends most of his time sitting in a chair reading. It seems to have worked out pretty well as a strategy. We are also voracious consumers of information, and for the most part, it has worked out for our clients too.
One way of knowing if we are doing our job well is to look at the performance of our portfolio companies. We should surely not be looking only at the performance of the stock prices, which over the short term have an element of randomness and volatility caused by any number of things.
What matters, and what we should be looking at, is the actual revenue and earnings of each company, and the prospects for increased revenues and earnings going forward. We believe, and history shows, that companies that grow their earnings increase in value, and that over time that value shows up in the stock price.
