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How would you describe your investment philosophy?
I have what I call a Thematic Growth approach. To me, this means finding growth companies by looking for a theme or concept in society. Doing what I call connecting the dots. There are investment opportunities all around you. It is about being able to understand how that theme can progress. The concept that makes the theme work and how you can make money.

For example, my 5 and 2-year old girls consume 90% of their content from watching YouTube videos of people I have never heard of. Is their investment opportunity in this? If so what is it? Who wins? Who loses? Is this the future of content? Then I go out and find those answers and the companies that will be the winners.

I’m not the type to use a model, or sit at my desk and find a stock that trades with a P/E at a discount to its peers. There is usually a reason for that discount, right? If you believe in the efficient market hypothesis, then you believe that all information is priced into the market at all times. So if that is the case, how can there be value stocks? Financial models make assumptions about the future that to me, are too hard to accurately predict with precision. I learned all of it in grad school when I was getting my MS in Investment Management, and I never liked it. Thinking about it honestly and logically, one of the most important values is your “R” value or your risk free rate of return. If we went back in time to 2010, what would you have used? 3%, 4% maybe a 5% rate? Everyone was expecting rates to be at 5% for the 10-year treasury in 2011. Well it is 2016 and we are still at 1.5% on the 10 year. So any model I would have used would have been completely wrong. How can you discount a cash flow if you can’t even find a reliable “R”?

What was your earliest experience with investing?
I started following the market 22 years ago when I was 16. My first experience was when I was home sick from school one day and I came across CNBC. I knew my dad had a portfolio and he had some stocks for me as well. I remember watching and found it to be really interesting. My interest just really grew over the years. I remember seeing Netscape go public. I’m sure many of your readers may have no clue what Netscape even is—it was an internet browser. It was essentially the stock that in my mind started the internet technology craze of the mid-to-late 90’s.

I started working in the business when I was 19, the summer of my freshmen year. I decided to get a summer job so I walked up and down Cuttermill Road in Great Neck, NY, into all the office buildings. If I saw that a firm had a member of NYSE next its name on the directory, I would go up to the office and ask if they had any openings. I got a job with HD Brous. I remember it being an incredible experience being in a real investment environment. During my junior year I started a chapter of Financial Management Association with two friends where I became the president and by the end of my senior year, we had over 60 members.

Finally, I financed my undergrad school by investing. In fact, I finished with the same amount of money I started with, while paying for all of my tuition along the way. I remember having actually almost doubled it by the start of my senior year. The only reason I finished with same amount was because of the tech bubble busting in the spring of 2000. However, I still had enough left to pay for my Graduate Degree.

What makes your strategies so different versus your peers?
I take a long-term approach to investing. I have only made one trade for the portfolio since November of 2015, and that was a sale back in May. I believe in investing not trading. Every investment I make I think about whether or not I can hold the position for 3, 4, or 5 years. I never feel the need to have to readjust my portfolio or trade every time the market gets moody or volatile. I go through the 18-19 names in the portfolio, and I will ask myself questions on each company. For example, how does a slowing China affect mobile phone usage in Africa? Or how does a Brexit affect a company's ability to sell a drug in the US? These are things I will go through every time something happens in the world. I don’t make changes unless the investment thesis changes.

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