Author Archives: Edward A. Studzinski

About Edward A. Studzinski

Ed Studzinski has more than 30 years of institutional investment experience. He was a partner at Harris Associates in Chicago, Illinois. Harris is known for its value-oriented, bottom-up investment approach that frames the investment process as owning a piece of the business relative to the business value of the whole, ideally forever. At Harris, Ed was co-manager of the Oakmark Equity & Income Fund (OAKBX). During the nearly twelve years that he was in that role, the fund in 2006 won the Lipper Award in the balanced category for "Best Fund Over Five Years." Additionally, in 2011 the fund won the Lipper Award in the mixed-asset allocation moderate funds category as "Best Fund Over Ten Years. Concurrently Ed was also an equity research analyst, providing many of the ideas that contributed to the fund’s success. He has specialist knowledge in the defense, property-casualty insurance, and real estate industries, having followed and owned companies as diverse as Catellus Development, General Dynamics, Legacy Hotels, L-3, PartnerRe, Progressive Insurance, Renaissance Reinsurance, Rockwell Collins, SAFECO, St. Joe Corporation, Teledyne, and Textron. Before joining Harris Associates, over a period of more than 10 years, Ed was the Chief Investment Officer at the Mercantile National Bank of Indiana, and also served on their Executive and Asset-Liability Committees. Prior to Mercantile, Ed practiced law. A native of Peabody, Massachusetts, he received his A.B. in history (magna cum laude) from Boston College, where he was a Scholar of the College. He has a J.D. from Duke University and an M.B.A. in marketing and finance, as well as a Professional Accounting Program Certificate, from Northwestern University. Ed has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst credential. Ed belongs to the Investment Analyst Societies of Boston, Chicago, and New York City. He is admitted to the Bar in the District of Columbia, Illinois, and North Carolina.

Ruminations at Summer’s End

By Edward A. Studzinski

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

                                 George Bernard Shaw

Book Review

David Snowball recently asked if I would have any interest in reading Joel Tillinghast’s (Fidelity Low-Priced Stock Fund) new book entitled Big Money Thinks Small. While I am usually reluctant to read what often end up being collections of anecdotes about how smart someone was, the fact that it had been published by Columbia Business School Publishing overcame my initial reluctance. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed the book immensely, and found it to be a very thoughtful work. Let me first say that I do not know Mr. Tillinghast, other than by reputation. However, I have served on committees with people who do know Mr. Tillinghast and have worked with him. They are uniform in their praise of him both as an investor and as an individual. He is a true polymath with almost total recall. And unlike many who content themselves with a formulaic approach to investing, e.g. mean reversion, he seeks to understand the quality of a business, the numbers supporting the business, and the character, intelligence, and integrity of management. Two chapters in particular I would recommend to all are “Gamblers, Speculators, and Investors” and the last chapter entitled Continue reading →

For Whom Does the Bell Toll?

By Edward A. Studzinski

In the dawn, although I know

It will grow dark again,

How I hate the coming day.

                        Fujiwara No Michinobu

Buffett’s irreproducible edge

First, some addenda to last month’s comments, as there were a number of readers interested in private equity. One reader, whom I happened to agree with, identified Berkshire Hathaway as a private equity proxy, given that (a) Buffett is dealing with permanent capital with a true long-term time horizon, and (b) he has been clearly disciplined and dedicated to going where opportunities surface that others are inclined or required to ignore. It has actually been quite instructive to watch him complement his major holdings in Berkshire’s insurance businesses as well as the equity investments that he owned pieces of, such as American Express and Coca Cola, with the wholesale acquisition of an Continue reading →

Summer Musings

By Edward A. Studzinski

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present, are certain to miss the future.”

      John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Speech, Frankfurt, 25 June 1963.

The first six months of 2017 are gone, and most global markets have surged during that period. So those like me who thought valuations were starting to look extreme at the beginning of the year, once again cried “wolf” too soon. For those six months, Vanguard’s S&P 500 Admiral Fund achieved a total return of 9.3%, with an expense ratio of four basis points. Many actively managed funds, alas, did not perform quite as well for their investors, although their managers continued to do quite well, purchasing Continue reading →

The Boys of Summer

By Edward A. Studzinski

Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you, you have only to spend a little money.

   ERNEST HEMINGWAY

In recent weeks, a number of articles and books have made their way into print, and they are things worth taking a gander at as one ponders where we are in the economic cycle One of my favorite blogs to read is “The Brooklyn Investor,” which can be found at brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com which is updated intermittently. A recent piece was titled “High Fees” and posted May 19, 2017. The author discusses a Continue reading →

The Fifty Year Reich

By Edward A. Studzinski

 

“It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.”

  George Bernard Shaw

Some thirty-odd years after its founding, the transformation of Morningstar is complete. From a firm that got its start providing tools and research to assist the individual investor, we now see a firm that exists to offer tools, support, and research to financial advisors or intermediaries. To a large extent, that evolution was necessary given the changes in the marketplace for mutual funds, as well as the changes in the regulatory environment. And once Morningstar became a public company, it would have been incumbent upon its employees and management to focus on Continue reading →

Nothing Personal, It’s Just Business

By Edward A. Studzinski

“This is the business we’ve chosen. I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business.”

Hyman Roth speaking to Michael Corleone in the movie “Godfather II”

Another month has gone by, and the current period of disruption has not only continued, but accelerated in the mutual fund management business. For all but the true believers (or perhaps those holding stock in the publicly-traded fund managers), it should be apparent that we are witnessing not just a cyclical decline, but a secular one.

Let’s start with the settlement between Bill Gross and Continue reading →

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward —–

By Edward A. Studzinski

“Frost on grass: a fleeting form, that is and is not!”

  Zaishiki

This is the time of the month when I am usually wrestling with what to say and trying to avoid repeating myself, which can be pretty difficult after several years of columns. This month, I have something of a surfeit of material, so I will apologize in advance for the rambling.

A few weeks ago, I attended the annual Graham and Dodd Conference at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business in New York. As always, the speakers were Continue reading →

Survival of the Flushest?

By Edward A. Studzinski

“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

Ambrose Bierce

A question I have been pondering with increasing frequency is, of the mutual funds around today, how many of them will still be around in ten years? This grew out of a year-end luncheon with a friend of mine who heads up the strategic planning effort for a large financial services firm out of Chicago that has gone global and now has its fingers in many pies. Our discussion started around the problem with Continue reading →

“What Goes Around ……”

By Edward A. Studzinski

Democracy – “The substitution of election by the incompetent many for the appointment of the corrupt few.”

        George Bernard Shaw

So, another calendar year has gone by, and fund managers everywhere are dissecting their relative performance in comparison to some benchmark index. To put things into perspective for a real-world comparison (at least in terms of the performance numbers), the Admiral shares of the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund, which charges a five basis point fee, had a one-year Continue reading →

Behind Door Number Two Is?

By Edward A. Studzinski

 

“I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.”

Karl Kraus

I recently had occasion to read proxy materials for San Juan Basin Royalty Trust. The issue involved an attempt to remove the current trustee, Compass Bank, the successor to TexasBank, which had been acquired by Compass, with Southwest Bank. The story is a recurring one in banking – a smaller local institution gets gobbled up by Continue reading →