International investing star Mark Yockey joins us in a WealthTrack Exclusive to discuss his global stock picks and sustainable growth at reasonable prices. With episodic exceptions, the U.S. has been the place to invest since the global financial crisis. There have been occasional bouts of outperformance by European and emerging markets, specific geographical locals and individual countries but overall, the U.S. markets trajectory has been higher, the U.S. economy stronger and the dollar dominant.
The past year is a case in point. No matter where you looked around the world currencies weakened against the dollar. From the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc, to the Indian rupee and the South Korean won, to the British pound and the Euro to the Chilean peso and Brazilian real. It’s been a challenging time for global investors, especially those running international funds. This week’s guest is up to the challenge and has been investing overseas for nearly three decades. It’s been a challenging time for global investors, especially those running international funds. This week’s guest is up to the challenge and has been investing overseas for nearly three decades. International investing star Mark Yockey joins us in a WealthTrack Exclusive to discuss his global stock picks.
Mark Yockey: Sustainable Growth At Reasonable Prices
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Transcript
Consuelo I think it will. The U.S. is good at some industries that the rest of the world is not very good at and some of these industries we dominate. Some of these industries that I'm thinking about are things like technology big chunks of technology we dominate. You think about Amazon or Google or Facebook. Much of the software space is dominated by American companies and these companies simply don't exist outside the United States with you know maybe a few exceptions. And then you think about biotechnology that's largely driven by the United States and innovations and most innovations in health care. Not certainly not all but many innovations in health care driven by what's going on in the United States. So I think you know as long as these growth industries of the future are dominated by what's going on in the United States. You know you're going to have opportunities to invest in things here that you don't have in other parts of the world.
And how long do you think the dominance will continue. Because I'm thinking you know there are all these statistics about the number of new patents for instance that are being issued globally. And the Chinese are apps dominating. Yeah. New patents new ideas new technologies. Do you see any immediate threat to our tech technological dominance for instance or are our dominance in drug creation or.
No I don't. I think it's gonna be a long time before the Chinese catch up and these new industries are two to three generations behind in chip production for example. They're totally dependent on many of their companies on videos chip. And in the biotechnology area they're just beginning to do research in many areas of technology biotechnology. So I think it's going to in 20 25 years from now it may be a different story. But as long as as long as people continue to innovate in this country and innovation is rewarded you know if you're an entrepreneur in the United States you can you can benefit a lot from the from Europe innovations in right and in many other countries and possibly China. Not always but sometimes you don't always enjoy the benefits of those innovations and she that makes a difference does it does.
Do you think that growth is going to continue to outperform value. I do.
I do. I think a lot of value stocks have value traps. Because it's a digital economy today. The businesses that. That added a lot of value in the past are being disciplined mediated and I'm not talking about taxes and uber I'm talking about you know software companies replacing other companies that provided the same service and now you can buy it software a quarter of the price. A lot of industrial companies are or are being dissenter mediated by other companies. And so we'd like to find companies. One of our sort of pillars of our investment style is to find areas where there's not a lot of competition right. Because if we can find areas where there's not a lot of competition you typically have more pricing flexibility and you'd like to have the ability to raise prices. And that's why these data providers companies like that are so valuable because they can raise prices because they're little monopolies.
So if I look at the global equity fund versus the International Fund for instance what kinds of companies have made the biggest difference for the global equity fund that you couldn't invest in in the International Fund.
So the software area has been the biggest difference and there's a couple of companies in the health care sector I think some names in the tool sector you know we like the companies that make the tools that allow medical research to be done. Companies like Danaher companies like Perkin Elmer. Companies like buy or read these companies. These industries are dominated by US companies.
Things for instance are the fangs. Now what we've done is what do we what have you done with the funding. Well we put a couple of the things in the international fund right.
You might say well they're not exactly international but in our view they are unique companies that operate globally so a very small part of the international fund is invested in U.S. companies right.
And I think it is 14 percent or something. Right.
And these are mainly things right now and artists and you describe the kind of companies you buy basically is having sustainable growth at reasonable prices. So what does sustainable growth mean. What are you looking for.
So Consuelo that means we're looking for companies that are not going to be around for a year or two years or three years they're going to be around for 20 years. Companies that continue to innovate companies that continue to grow nicely we've owned for over 15 years. It's been a wonderful stock it's more than tripled may have quadrupled. And you think that's a big dumb boring food company but actually it's terribly innovative. They have great products. They're respected around the world.
