Tis’ the season and I hope everyone is enjoying this time of year. I just finished celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas is only a couple short weeks away. With the new year just around the corner, I thought I’d put together a list of some great investors you all should have on your radar. I try and soak up as much wisdom as possible and these investors are dripping with juicy nuggets of information. This list ranges from bloggers to CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, running the entire gamut. Knowledge can be gained from all kinds of different sources. This is far from a complete list, but just a few names you all should familiarize yourselves with.

1. Francois Rochon-  First on our list is Canadian investor Francois Rochon. Rochon started his investment firm, Giverny Capital, over 20 years ago. Unfortunately, I had never heard of him until earlier this year. To make up for this delay, I devoured all of his annual reports in a single day. He is a classic GARP investor, focusing far more on the quality of a business than on the price of a stock on any given day. He is more concerned with how the earnings of a company are increasing each and every year. His returns are admirable, averaging 15.7% since 1993 as compared to the index result of 9.2%. Over the course of 25 years, this discrepancy has led to magnificent results. I particularly enjoy his writing style, mixing humor and humility. He includes a section every year highlighting his greatest mistakes, something that every investor can surely relate to. My own personal account seems to overlap with his constantly, with companies such as: Markel, Berkshire, Google, Visa and Union Pacific showing up in both. You can see his reports located on his company’s website
2. 2. Pat Dorsey– I was introduced to this famed investor through Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s great podcast The Investor’s Field Guide. Dorsey gained notoriety through being the director of equity research at Morningstar, a well known investment research company. He went on to write a couple of highly regarded books The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing and The Little Book that Builds Wealth, as well as start his own asset management firm. He focuses on companies with strong moats, otherwise known as durable competitive advantages. Due to those advantages, they are able to keep high returns on capital far longer than the average company. In his own words, his strategy can be summarized as “We purchase these businesses at what we believe to be reasonable discounts to a rational assessment of intrinsic value, and we seek to invest in companies with corporate managers who we believe can allocate capital in ways that benefit long-term minority shareholders.” Here is a great compilation of resources he has shared on his Website
3. Warren Buffett– I would be remiss to make a list of extraordinary investors and exclude the granddaddy of them all. While often thought to be a value investor, I think he can more appropriately be given the categorization of a GARP investor. I probably don’t need to spend much time talking up his accomplishments, you’ve heard them all before. Just know that he is as wise as they come and his lessons are timeless. You can of course read his annual reports, watch his numerous interviews or even go to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting as I have done myself in the past.
4. Mark Leonard– Another famous businessperson I am embarrassed to have only found this year is Canadian superstar CEO Mark Leonard. Leonard is the CEO and founder of Constellation Software. While Warren Buffett has famously avoided technology, Leonard has embraced it. Realizing that software companies in niche industries spin off tremendous amounts of cash while only requiring minimal ongoing capital investments, Leonard has created a decentralized juggernaut. Leonard uses the vast amount of free cash to then acquire an ever growing list of niche software companies.  His real brilliance was in identifying how strong a moat these companies could have. Think of a dentist or an optometrist. Once they start using a particular software for their office, it becomes incredibly difficult to switch. All of their patient records are stored on that program. In order to switch, all of that data would need to be reentered and staff needed to be retrained on a brand new software. He has taken that premise and bought up companies in hundreds, if not thousands of different industries. You can read his annual letters, going back all the way to 1996 here.
5. John Huber– I’ve been following this fellow blogger for a number of years at BaseHitInvesting. Not only does he run an incredibly informative blog, he also runs his own fund, Saber Capital Management. In his own words “Our general strategy is to make meaningful investments in high quality, predictable businesses that can be expected to grow intrinsic value at high rates and that are currently available at cheap prices.” I would peg that definition right up the GARP alley. I’ve learned a lot from Mr. Huber over the years, particularly his series on ROIC and compounding. He recently wrote up a new post entitled “Facebook Is Undervalued.” I’ve shared my thoughts on FB previously and the two of us seem to see eye to eye. I look forward to reading more of what he has to say over the years.
6. Connor Leonard– I was introduced to our final GARP investor of the day through a guest post on Huber’s blog BaseHitInvesting a couple of years ago. Leonard(No relation to Mark as far as I know) runs the public securities portfolio for Investment Management Corporation. IMC is a particularly interesting business case study. On only $50,000 of startup capital, the founders started the restaurant Golden Corral. Due to managerial brilliance and the fixation on cash flow, they have never needed to invest a penny more. With such great cash flow, they have entered into many other business arenas, as well as their public securities division, which is where Leonard fits in. He runs his portfolio in a GARP oriented style. With a focus on moats and capital light compounders he has found great success. I foresee his notoriety in the investment community growing considerably over the years.

As always thank you for reading. I hope you found this post interesting. These are all great investors you can learn a ton from. Subscribe and let me know what you think. Thanks again!