On doing nothing, profitably

Our trading record for the first quarter would disappoint anyone hoping for activity. We bought nothing. We sold nothing. By the one number the industry likes to count, turnover, we did no work at all.

It was still one of the busier quarters in years. We read three years of filings on a business we have followed since 2018. We spent two days with a management team in Coventry. We re-checked four of our eleven holdings from scratch, as if we were buying them for the first time. None of that produced a trade, because none of it produced a reason to trade.

Sitting still is the hardest thing this job asks of us.

The market pays well for the appearance of effort. Funds report how much they traded as though motion were the same as progress. The compounding we care about happens inside the businesses we own. It does not happen in our brokerage account. Most days the job is to keep our own restlessness from getting in its way.

So we did nothing, and were paid for it. We expect to do a lot more of the same.

The views above are the firm's own and are provided for information only. They are not investment advice, nor an offer or solicitation to invest. Capital at risk; the value of investments can go down as well as up, and past performance is not a guide to future results.