Not a whole lot of action from the US overnight as the markets have a rest after yesterdays gallop. Speaking of, it’s quite amusing to see our domestic response to that, you’d hardly thing the US had moved at all judging by our market yesterday. Saying that. the ASX didn’t slump nearly as much as the US during the tariff tantrum.
- S&P 500 = +0.01%
- Nasdaq = +0.5%
- Aussie dollar down 0.7% to 64.27US cents
- Iron up 2.2% to $101.70 US a tonne
Rask Invest twelve months in
Just over twelve months ago we launched Rask Invest. The whole Rask business started with Owen putting a video up on Youtube, “What are shares?” The focus was education and still is today.
We have a lofty goal of having 100,000 people enrol in our courses and our podcasts focus on providing listeners with the knowledge to get on top of their personal finances and investing.
But, what we discovered was, for every person who was happy to take that information and start investing themselves there were at least half a dozen more who said, “listen, I get it. I understand investing now but I would still like someone else to do it for me.”
Our community understand the importance of investing for their future wealth creation but are time poor due to growing families and careers or after going down the Youtube and podcast rabbit hole find that they’re just not that into it any more. It’s still very important to them but they’d prefer to focus on other things. Hence, Rask Invest was born.
Just now we are about to undertake a step change in our portfolios. You may have seen our event, Escape Velocity happening live on Youtube tomorrow. During this event we’ll talk about the evolution of the service but most importantly unveil the new holdings.
Hospitality and portfolios
One of those holdings is a position in an active managed fund that has recently listed as an ETF. The Lakehouse Global Growth Fund Active ETF (ASX: LHGG) only listed on the ASX a few short months ago, however the listing is simply another entry point for a fund that has been operating since November 2017. LHGG will add global diversification, in a concentrated manner, to our three growth focused portfolios.
The Lakehouse teams performance has been exceptional, after fees it has returned investors 17.5%pa since inception. Of course, it has not been without volatility, but to get a different return to the market you need to be different. Instead of looking at a performance number I like to focus on the process. The performance number is simply an outcome of the process and culture of an investment team.
Now, this may seem a little unrelated but stay with me. I love good hospitality, whether it is at a cafe, pub or a twelve course degustation. A book that has shaped how I like to build investor service teams is Will Guidara’s concept of Unreasonable Hospitality.
Will is most famous for taking the restaurant Eleven Madison Park from the 50th ranked restaurant in the world to number one in just one year.
The food was already exceptional, what Will changed was the service. One aspect was to look at something a fine dining restaurant really wouldn’t care about.
The focus was on the food and wine, but when they first sat down some diners wanted a beer to start. Will saw they were just being given a bog standard Peroni or something similar. Some diners wanted a coffee after they had finished and were given a perfectly ok coffee from a cheap machine using average beans. These two experiences were the first and last a diner would have.
When the staff were all dining together before service they were talking about their weekends. One waiter kept talking about these breweries he visited. He was obsessed with finding great beers. Will immediately said, you’re our new beer guy and gave him the brief of creating a beer menu that would blow away any hop connoisseur. He even started collaborating with local breweries to make unique, exceptional beers you could only experience at Eleven Madison Park.
The solution to the coffee problem was similar, Will noticed a waiter who kept a list of the best, most interesting cafes in the city. In their spare time they were seeking out coffee perfection and perfecting their home set up. Immediately this person was given the brief of creating a coffee program.
Will leaned into his teams personal fascinations.
Embracing your fascinations
This story immediately came to mind when I read about Lakehouse and their approach to “fascinations”. The major institutions have sector analysts. Someone will focus on banks, another on resources, another on retail and so on. Lakehouse assign Strategy Captains that are responsible for a fascination. They lean into what business model each analyst is obsessed with.
Right now these take the form of loyalty (think companies with super high rates of customer retention), networks (SAAS businesses, social media and marketing networks etc) and intellectual property such as incredibly strong durable brands. Look at a monthly report and you’ll see the investments labelled in these categories.
As business models evolve and areas of interest change, expect to see these areas of fascination evolve as well.
To get a different result you need to do something differently and we’re happy to be welcoming LHGG into the Rask Invest portfolios. To see all the new holdings make sure you join us over on Youtube tomorrow at midday for Escape Velocity.
As always, if you want to get in touch with me please use the chat in the bottom right, jump across to Rask Invest or find me in the Community.
