In our fourth annual investing issue, we talk to 12 investors, from Bay Street to Wall Street to Silicon Valley, about how to make money now, their worst moves, best advice and favourite reads—plus a few dire warnings and sunny predictions, too. Indeed, our 2014 crop of legends runs the gamut in terms of outlook. Peter Schiff—a.k.a. Dr. Doom, the guy who called the housing market crisis—is bracing for an even more catastrophic collapse of the U.S. economy than we saw in 2008. Meanwhile, famed Wharton School professor Jeremy Siegel, author of the “buy and hold bible,” Stocks for the Long Run, is counting on the Dow to gain as much as 15% in the coming year. The one thing they all agree on: Think long-term.
- Donald Yacktman
- Peter Schiff
- Jeremy Grantham
- Charles Brandes
- James O’Shaughnessy
- Peter Thiel
- Satish Rai
- Jeremy Siegel
- Geraldine Weiss
- Bill Miller
- Gerry Schwartz
- Rob Arnott
Donald Yacktman
Value investor Donald Yacktman, 72, has returned an annual average of close to 10% over the past 15 years in his two flagship funds — double the S&P 500 Index.
By John Daly
What is the biggest risk that investors face right now?
The stock market is not cheap.
Is that why you’ve been holding a lot of cash lately?
Yacktman Asset Management manages close to $30 billion. In 2007 and today, we’ve had a fair bit of cash. We were at about 20% at the end of the third quarter of 2013. Usually, as the market goes up, our cash tends to build. Because we’re investing from the bottom up, not the top down, the cash is a residual. That’s telling you how hard it is to find stocks to buy.
What about the argument that investors hire a manager to pick stocks, not to hold cash?
Our primary goal is to protect our clients’ money, and there are two sides to that. One is protecting it against bad decisions—buying things that are overpriced. The other is to protect against inflation. You have a tough period now, because cash doesn’t earn anything. If it earned something, our cash position would probably be even higher.
Full article via theglobeandmail
