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There was only one call. Here are some other points.
Laura's love and interest is all cap, going back even to her pre-Wasatch days. She was constrained on Wasatch International Opportunities, for example, to small cap, but she was all cap in the Frontier Small Country strategy that she founded and led. Her investment approach and universe for her initial strategies at Rondure will be very similar to what she had been doing.
The 800lb gorillas she referenced are companies with strong market share. In some countries, these may be local companies that are small/mid-cap companies, but in other situations they may be large multinational companies. She wants the flexibility to look at the full range, with the common characteristic being that they are great, market leading companies.
She bought many of these types of companies in her Frontier strategy. She mentioned that her avg market cap at Wasatch may have been higher than people realize. Part of her interest in starting her own firm is to take some constraints off and run money the way she would want to run it. She has loved core companies across the cap spectrum and loves this core all-cap focus. It's where she wants to put her own money.
@openice, thanks again! I missed the discussion about her experience at Wasatch so thanks for filling in those blanks.
Isn't it a bit strange though. I know she was investing in some of the smaller emerging markets but the entire frontier markets universe, according to MSCI, has a market cap of $137 billion and the largest single company is $5.7 billion. Of course the strong dollar has made those numbers smaller in the last few years but its not exactly easy to be "all-cap" unless you consider it relative to frontier markets specifically rather than globally.
The idea of go anywhere, do anything has been tried a few times before and not many that I'm aware of have succeeded particularly well. It will be interesting to see how she does and I hope it works well because she'll almost certainly have some of my money.
Comments
There was only one call. Here are some other points.
Laura's love and interest is all cap, going back even to her pre-Wasatch days. She was constrained on Wasatch International Opportunities, for example, to small cap, but she was all cap in the Frontier Small Country strategy that she founded and led. Her investment approach and universe for her initial strategies at Rondure will be very similar to what she had been doing.
The 800lb gorillas she referenced are companies with strong market share. In some countries, these may be local companies that are small/mid-cap companies, but in other situations they may be large multinational companies. She wants the flexibility to look at the full range, with the common characteristic being that they are great, market leading companies.
She bought many of these types of companies in her Frontier strategy. She mentioned that her avg market cap at Wasatch may have been higher than people realize. Part of her interest in starting her own firm is to take some constraints off and run money the way she would want to run it. She has loved core companies across the cap spectrum and loves this core all-cap focus. It's where she wants to put her own money.
Derf
Isn't it a bit strange though. I know she was investing in some of the smaller emerging markets but the entire frontier markets universe, according to MSCI, has a market cap of $137 billion and the largest single company is $5.7 billion. Of course the strong dollar has made those numbers smaller in the last few years but its not exactly easy to be "all-cap" unless you consider it relative to frontier markets specifically rather than globally.
The idea of go anywhere, do anything has been tried a few times before and not many that I'm aware of have succeeded particularly well. It will be interesting to see how she does and I hope it works well because she'll almost certainly have some of my money.