Yacktman took that wisdom to heart, but the founder of Austin-based YCG Investments and co-manager of the $357 million YCG Enhanced fund (ticker: YCGEX) has developed his own style of investing. While he looks for quality businesses with high returns on tangible assets, his investment decisions hinge on whether companies have enduring pricing power in industries that are growing at least as fast as gross domestic product. “If you don’t have pricing power, you can’t maintain sustainable high...

The Covid-19 crisis has taken away so many things—lives, livelihoods, and daily life as most people know it. It has magnified income inequality, and stirred up feelings of fear, guilt, gratitude, and generosity. It has also forced families to spend more time together, for better or worse. Parents are working from home, teens and college students are logging in to virtual classrooms, and many young adults have returned to the parental nest to escape cramped city apartments or regroup in the...

The economic devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic has once again put millennials and their uncertain financial futures in the spotlight: They came of age during the Great Recession, and now the oldest among them are turning 40 at a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty. Fund manager Bill Smead who is himself the father of five millennials, thinks investors aren’t giving enough credit to the collective spending of 72 million Americans who are getting married, starting families, and...

“I still think the best companies have an obligation to give money back to their shareholders in some form,” says the manager of the $38.9 billion Vanguard Dividend Growth fund (ticker: VDIGX). “But what’s different now is that the shareholder may not be the primary stakeholder that companies need to think about.” In light of these extraordinary circumstances, Kilbride says he may, for the first time since taking over this fund in 2006, give companies a pass if they need to reduce or suspend...

Mark Twain is credited with the quip: “Buy land, they’re not making anymore of it.” His wisdom could be updated today with the advice to buy farmland. The world’s population is swelling, so much that global food production needs to increase 50% by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute. Arable land is becoming more scarce, and climate change and extreme weather make it an even more precious commodity. Food fads and commodity swings do influence crop prices, but agricultural land...