In this post, we shall discuss a couple of trades, some related to the tariff tantrums and some related to the pivot on this substack. Let’s talk about the pivot first. As regular readers on substack may know, there is no shortage of stock analysis and market commentators. In my own posts, I have frequently linked fellow substackers if they have written about the same stocks. As such, I have thought about the differentiation required for this substack and I believe shareholder activism would be an interesting pivot.
Shareholder activism had always been around. Warren Buffett was the activist when he took over Berkshire Hathaway. But to be an activist means that you must criticize management, be willing to replace them and be the bad guy. Then do the transformation then is needed to unlockvalue. It’s a lot of hard work. Perhaps Buffett saw through all that and he didn't really want to be antagonistic all the time, so he gave up and pursued the simpler value investing.
However, in the early 2000s, activism came to the US in a big way with the likes of Elliott Management, Pershing Square, Third Point, Trian Partners, Starboard, ValueAct and others. Of course, there is Carl Icahn who has also been doing it all his life. This movement then grew globally into Europe and more recently Japan. While we could be too early, Asia ex-Japan might be targeted in the near future. As such, writing about activism now could become really big a few years from now, who knows?
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