Important Message For Subscribers

Investment Opportunities - Finding Hidden Gems

Dear ‘Rock & Turner’ Community

I recently engaged in a meaningful conversation with one of my valued subscribers, sparking the need to share this brief message with all of you.

“Why do you write infrequently and publish at irregular intervals?”

Subscriber Question

If you expect regular publications from me, then I owe you a sincere apology because I have mismanaged your expectations.

I don't like to spam people. I am not in the business of producing content for the sake of producing content. There are plenty of others who do that.

In his 2023 Shareholder letter, Warren Buffett confessed that over the course of his illustrious 60 year career at Berkshire Hathaway, he has only really had 12 truly great investments. That's an average of one every five years from a man who is arguably the best investor in the business.

Successful investing is only achieved through a great deal of hard work. It is all about finding wonderful investment opportunities that others are yet to discover. These are difficult to find and appear very infrequently.

"I’ve always said that if you look at ten companies you’ll find one that’s interesting... The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game."

Peter Lynch, interviewed by Peter Tanous for the book "Investment Gurus: A Road Map to Wealth from the World's Best Money Managers", published 23 March 2000.

"You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies... No one will tell you about these businesses. You have to find them."

Warren Buffett, in response to a student question at the University of Kansas, 2005.

The lesson to be learned is that, metaphorically speaking, turning over rocks is the key to success. I have embedded this philosophy in my work which is why this Substack is called 'Rock & Turner'.

Out of every 100 companies scrutinized, finding one hidden gem is to be considered fortunate. Therefore, expecting a continuous flow of exceptional investment ideas is unrealistic.

On that basis, I find it odd that so many people expect a steady stream of great investment ideas on a regular basis. It just doesn't work that way.

Substack subscriptions, in my humble opinion, should be valued based on quality rather than quantity. The essence lies in the thousands of hours invested behind the scenes, presenting you with the occasional hidden gem while sparing you the time that would otherwise be wasted sifting through 99 less promising pieces of analysis.

If you subscribe to websites such as Seeking Alpha or to other investment Substacks that habitually push out content on a daily basis come rain or shine, then you need to ask yourself:

• Are they adding value to my life or costing me too much time?

• Is their aim to highlight great investment opportunities for me? Or are they more interested in building internet traffic to drive advertising revenue?

The good news is that I am committed to delivering content that holds genuine value. My objective is to ensure that each piece I write transcends the noise being generated by others and offers insights that really matter. When an article from me arrives in your inbox, I hope that you can be confident that this is something that you will want to find the time to read.

Kind regards

P.S. If you enjoy reading my analysis and know someone else that may benefit from it, please feel free to refer your friends: