Shernel Thielman

There is a thought experiment that Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, regularly uses to illustrate his approach. Imagine, he says, that at birth you are handed a ticket with twenty boxes on it. Every time you make an investment decision, one box is punched. Once all the boxes have been used, you may never invest again. How carefully would you then weigh each decision? The ticket does not exist in reality. But the logic behind it is powerful. Most investors make...

A shift is underway in how the world's largest and smartest institutional investors deploy their capital. For well over two decades, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and university endowments have been steadily increasing their allocation to what the financial world calls 'alternative assets': infrastructure, real estate, renewable energy, private equity and private credit. Assets that are not traded on an exchange, but acquired in direct transactions and held for...

There is a quality that is much discussed in the investment world but rarely measured systematically: operational credibility. The degree to which a company does what it says it will do. Not once, but year after year, quarter after quarter, including when conditions disappoint. In the mining industry, that credibility takes a concrete and measurable form: meeting annual production guidance. Every year, mining companies announce how much metal they expect to produce. The market, the...