Last week, Joey Hines and I spoke one-on-one with the best investment minds in the business at the Morningstar investment conference. The #1 takeaway was an affirmation of our investment thesis.
The best equity minds agree the greatest opportunity is outside the US and that in the US you must be very selective. They also feel rising rates will cause active management to shine (which it has to some degree so far, this year) and that investors in traditional US bonds face serious headwinds.
Fortunately, several excellent managers recently left other firms and started boutique shops (like Grandeur Peak). We are currently conducting serious due diligence on additional global and overseas equity funds as well as bond funds we believe offer excellent opportunity in this environment and are already slowly adding some of these to your portfolios.
Click here to read a blog I wrote in 2014 on how we select managers: How We Select, Categorize, and Fire Managers.
In summary, we are excited. Our thesis is playing out. We will provide more detail in coming weeks on this as well as some other insights we gained. This is hard work, but it’s hard work we love.