Why we still hold the same twelve companies

Eleven of the twelve companies in Global Equity have been in the portfolio since 2014. The twelfth was bought in 2019. That is one change in seven years, and it is the whole turnover story for this mandate.

The case for each holding was written down before it was bought, with the date and the price paid. We reread those notes once a year. A holding is sold when the case we wrote is no longer true, not when the price moves.

The obvious objection is that twelve is too few. It is few by design. The median holding has been owned for eleven years, and an eleven-year holding period is only possible if the number of things you own is small enough to know.

The second objection is that concentration is risk. It is, and the track record shows what it cost: two negative calendar years since 2010, in 2018 and in 2022. Both are in the drawdown list sent with each mandate summary, and neither was hidden in an average.