In the Company of Mavericks

Coming soon, Duncan MacInnes presents a tour de force of the major financial asset classes and how to manage risk in today's crazy markets.

He covers why he is so bullish on gold, gold miners, the yen and UK equities, and long Chinese equities, the ugliest in his portfolio of ugly ducklings.

He also riffs on the yen carry trade, Bitcoin, premium drinks, and how we might know we are nearer the top than the bottom of the current equity market cycle.

Made possible by Progressive Equity Research.   

In today’s episode, I am joined by Mark Wharrier, an experienced professional investor who previously worked with companies such as  Mercury and Black Rock and is now focused on investing in public and private companies. 

We have a fascinating conversation with Ami Daniel, the co-founder and CEO of AIM-listed Windward.

Windward is a 14-year-old company that provides B2B data and software solutions. It helps governments and businesses track, manage, comply with, and protect maritime assets worldwide. Its solutions provide awareness and insights into what Ami calls the problem of big oceans and small ships.

Windward was listed on AIM in 2021 and is currently valued at £120m. 

Ami is a high-energy entrepreneur. Having survived a near-death experience while serving in the Israeli Navy in 2006, he has established Windward as a high-growth, recurring revenue company with a large addressable market. Ami is one of life’s optimists and a joy to chat with.   

In this episode, he discusses the challenges of running an unprofitable growth company, how being told "NO" is only temporary, the importance of building resilience, and why listing in London has been such a positive move for him and the business.  

It was great having Mark’s experienced approach to guide Ami through the key pillars of Windward’s investment case and paint a picture of what Windward could become as it approaches profitability and reinvests in its rapidly growing platform.   

I must remind you that this is for information purposes only. None of what you hear in this episode is investment or any other type of advice, and the views expressed are purely those of the contributors and not the views of Progressive Equity or any other organisation mentioned in this podcast.

Please enjoy our conversation with the maverick, Ami Daniel.   

Made possible by Progressive Equity.  

Coming soon on your favourite podcast app is a fascinating chat with Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward. Ami is a high-energy entrepreneur driving the fastest annual recurring revenue business in the London market, and he was a joy to talk with. Windward has an impressive customer list and is building a suite of AI-powered products to drive Ami's ambition for Winward to become a multiple hundred-million-dollar revenue "rule of 40 company." 

Please subscribe so that you don't miss this and further episodes.

Made possible by Progressive Equity. 

In today’s episode, I am joined by Tim Price of Price Value Partners, a private wealth manager in London since the late 1990s. 

Originally an English literature graduate, Tim started work as a bond salesman for a Japanese bank.

However, he switched to private client wealth management, where he was to develop his well-reasoned but highly differentiated approach to managing money.  

Tim has developed this approach based on extensive reading in economics, history, finance, and investing. 

In this episode, he shares the main influences, which range from the Swiss Italian Renaissance mathematician Daniel Bernoulli to the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

His strategy has three main themes focusing on ….  value equities, systematic trend following and real assets. 

He has no time for the traditional 60/40 equity/bond portfolio. 

Due to the unsustainable level of sovereign debt and the sluggish outlook for economic growth, he describes bond investors as dancing around a live volcano. 

I have been reading Tim’s newsletters for a while and highly recommend subscribing.

Made possible by Progressive Equity Research. 

In today’s episode, I am joined by Tim Price of Price Value Partners, a private wealth manager in London since the late 1990s. 

Originally an English literature graduate, Tim started work as a bond salesman for a Japanese bank.

However, he switched to private client wealth management, where he was to develop his well-reasoned but highly differentiated approach to managing money.  

Tim has developed this approach based on extensive reading in economics, history, finance, and investing. 

In this episode, he shares the main influences, which range from the Swiss Italian Renaissance mathematician Daniel Bernoulli to the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and the Roman Emperor Diocletian.

His strategy has three main themes focusing on ….  value equities, systematic trend following and real assets. 

He has no time for the traditional 60/40 equity/bond portfolio. 

Due to the unsustainable level of sovereign debt and the sluggish outlook for economic growth, he describes bond investors as 'dancing on the edge of a live volcano'. 

I have been reading Tim’s newsletters for a while and highly recommend subscribing.

Made possible by Progressive Equity Research. 

In this episode, I am joined by someone who is probably the best-performing smaller companies fund manager you have never heard of. 

I first met Geoff Oldfield in the 1990s when he was working as the co-manager of the European Select Fund at Barings Asset Management. He and his partner Gerhard Shoeningh were making a name for themselves in the sector and, in 1998, left to set up Ennismore Fund Management with some very firm ideas about the type of investment firm they wanted to run.

The main pillars were performance over asset gathering (no fund marketing), investment decisions taken by PMs, not a committee, clawback of performance fees to reward individual contributions, and a firm owned internally by its portfolio managers. 

Ennismore’s first fund was launched in January 1999. It has been closed to new investors for most of its life, and a significant proportion of the fund is owned by its portfolio managers, including Geoff.  

I was fortunate enough to invest in the Ennismore European Smaller Companies fund on its launch. Over the subsequent nearly 25 years, it has delivered a 17-fold return with a focused absolute return strategy in European-listed smaller companies. This is an average annual return of 12%. Remarkably over the period, the fund only had three down years: 2008, 2009, and 2020, which together represented an aggregate negative 12% return. This is a track record fully demonstrating the advantages of an absolute return approach.  

Geoff is not a public figure and I have spoken to him about doing this podcast since he returned to frontline fund management. After a 10-year break, Geoff came back into portfolio management in an effort to help turn around the Ennismore Global Fund. This 2016 fund had scored “an own goal” (as Geoff puts it) while running short positions in the meme stock-obsessed NASDAQ market of 2020.  

Geoff is the epitome of the humble investor being respectful of Mr Market and also knowing when to take advantage of his emotionally charged moments of mis-valuation. He talks about mistakes he made in the GFC and how providing liquidity to investors is a good discipline despite investing in an illiquid asset class. He also describes how he defines quality companies and how they should be valued, but he also talks about how he always looks for a margin of safety. Critically he discusses what makes smaller companies such a rich seam of opportunity for value investors a strategy he has successfully pursued in the changing market circumstances for more than a quarter of a century.

I must remind you that nothing you hear today is investment advice. The views expressed are personal to the contributors and do not represent the views of Progressive Equity or Ennismore Fund Management. I hope you find it enjoyable and educational. As always when I chat with Geoff, I learned a lot.  

Please enjoy my conversation with the maverick investor, Geoff Oldfield. 

Brought to you by Progressive Equity. 

In this episode, I am joined by someone who is probably the best-performing smaller companies fund manager you have never heard of. 

I first met Geoff Oldfield in the 1990s when he was working as the co-manager of the European Select Fund at Barings Asset Management. He and his partner Gerhard Shoeningh were making a name for themselves in the sector and, in 1998, left to set up Ennismore Fund Management with some very firm ideas about the type of investment firm they wanted to run.

The main pillars were performance over asset gathering (no fund marketing), investment decisions taken by PMs, not a committee, clawback of performance fees to reward individual contributions, and a firm owned internally by its portfolio managers. 

Ennismore’s first fund was launched in January 1999. It has been closed to new investors for most of its life, and a significant proportion of the fund is owned by its portfolio managers, including Geoff.  

I was fortunate enough to invest in the Ennismore European Smaller Companies fund on its launch. Over the subsequent nearly 25 years, it has delivered a 17-fold return with a focused absolute return strategy in European-listed smaller companies. This is an average annual return of 12%. Remarkably over the period, the fund only had three down years: 2008, 2009, and 2020, which together represented an aggregate negative 12% return. This is a track record fully demonstrating the advantages of an absolute return approach.  

Geoff is not a public figure and I have spoken to him about doing this podcast since he returned to frontline fund management. After a 10-year break, Geoff came back into portfolio management in an effort to help turn around the Ennismore Global Fund. This 2016 fund had scored “an own goal” (as Geoff puts it) while running short positions in the meme stock-obsessed NASDAQ market of 2020.  

Geoff is the epitome of the humble investor being respectful of Mr Market and also knowing when to take advantage of his emotionally charged moments of mis-valuation. He talks about mistakes he made in the GFC and how providing liquidity to investors is a good discipline despite investing in an illiquid asset class. He also describes how he defines quality companies and how they should be valued, but he also talks about how he always looks for a margin of safety. Critically he discusses what makes smaller companies such a rich seam of opportunity for value investors a strategy he has successfully pursued in the changing market circumstances for more than a quarter of a century.

I must remind you that nothing you hear today is investment advice. The views expressed are personal to the contributors and do not represent the views of Progressive Equity or Ennismore Fund Management. I hope you find it enjoyable and educational. As always when I chat with Geoff, I learned a lot.  

Please enjoy my conversation with the maverick investor, Geoff Oldfield.

Brought to you by Progressive Equity 

For this episode, I am joined by Jim Leaviss, one of the UK’s leading bond fund managers and the voice behind the podcast Uncle Jim’s World of Bonds. 

I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, but there aren’t many that I always listen to. However, Uncle Jim’s World of Bonds is always a must-listen to. It's both entertaining and informative. It is typically just 10 minutes long and contains some real nuggets covering macroeconomics, financial markets, politics, and the long-term drivers impacting the world all investors inhabit.  

We recorded this chat on July 1st, and quite a lot has happened since then. Obviously, we have had elections in the UK and France and the advancement of England and France to the semifinals of Euro 24.   

In this episode, Jim discusses why he thinks bonds are so interesting and important and what we, as investors, can learn from them. He also discusses Trussonomics, the implications of French political instability, the potential impact of an unwinding of Japan’s carry trade, what to know about credit spreads, and how they might inform equity markets. 

Jim has been a fund manager at M&G for 27 years, most recently as CIO for fixed income. Since we recorded this episode, Jim has announced his departure later this year to study art history. I very much hope he can also find the time to keep up his podcasting, maybe interspersing yield curve analysis with a view on the modern relevance of German expressionism from the inter-war period.   

I must remind you that none of what you hear is investment advice, it is all just the personal views of the people talking and does not represent the views of any organisation mentioned in this podcast. 

Please enjoy my conversation with Uncle Jim about his world of bonds. 

Made possible by Progressive Equity. 

In this episode, Julian Collett of Blackdown Partners joins me for a conversation with Simon Phillips, the founder and CEO of CT Automotive, a £50m market cap, AIM-listed company. 

Simon’s journey is a powerful example of how adverse circumstances, can be a fertile ground for learning and growth. His story underscores the crucial role of resilience in business success. The development of a business supplying tooling and components to the global automotive industry is a testament to Simon’s well-honed entrepreneurial skills and can-do attitude, forged in the face of adversity. 

Growing up in one of London’s more socially deprived areas, Simon thrived in maths, physics, and engineering but was thwarted by his dyslexia in pursuing conventional employment. Through successful side hustles developed during his university years, Simon bought into a plastics moulding and tool-making business, becoming MD of his own company at the age of 25. 

Simon's vision for CT Automotive was clear from the start. He saw the huge potential in manufacturing in China to Western standards. This foresight led him to spend 16 years living in China, transforming CT from its tool-making roots into a global component supply business that serves most of the world’s largest automotive OEMs. 

Simon candidly discusses the challenges he faced in his chosen career path and how he overcame them. He shares why he chose to IPO the business on AIM in 2021 and reflects on the following couple of years as the most challenging period he has ever experienced.

Looking forward, Simon talks about the need to stay ahead via the adoption of AI and robotics, a trend that is happening so quickly that the shape of the automotive industry he supplies will be unknowable over the next few years. However, as he says, CT went to China for its low costs but is staying because of its world-class leadership in modern manufacturing technology.    

This is a fascinating story of resilience, innovation and raw entrepreneurialism. 

Please enjoy our conversation with the maverick, Simon Philips.  

Made possible by Progressive Equity. 

This is a fascinating story of resilience, innovation, and raw entrepreneurialism. Simon’s journey is a powerful example of how adverse circumstances can be fertile ground for learning and growth. Living in China for 16 years, transforming CT from its tool-making roots into a global component supply business, Simon candidly discusses the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. Simon talks about the need to stay ahead by adopting AI and robotics. He says that CT went to China for its low costs but is staying because of its world-class leadership in modern manufacturing technology.

I really enjoyed this one. I hope you do too.

Please subscribe on your podcast app or follow me on Substack.

Made possible by Progressive Equity.