Cove Street Capital

The calendar third quarter of 2023 was a messy one for financial markets at large, and we were not immune to its lack of charms. Nonetheless, it’s been a pretty good year for our small-cap strategy.

The world turns. New people are born and eventually move off the couch and into something resembling employment. And thus new generations of nonsense about “solved” topics are produced.

There is a whole world going on beyond the 8 largest stocks, which some people can’t see without a microscope or frankly have no inclination to bother stepping into the lab.

“Desengaño” was noted by one Antonio Garcia Martinez in his most excellent book, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, as a unique style of Spanish genre painting.

As we have noted in this space in the past, there is a lot of the world that cannot be captured by the most elegant and detailed of spreadsheets.

As we have noted in this space in the past, there is a lot of the world that cannot be captured by the most elegant and detailed of spreadsheets.

Every year has plenty of lessons when looking backward in December.

When your largest position, Viasat Inc. (Ticker: VSAT), enters into a transformational merger involving regulatory complexity, interesting technology, enough equity issuance to require a shareholder vote, and a conceptual doubling down against what might be called the “Elon Musk-generated low-earth-orbit satellites (LEO) space craze...

Be forewarned – we are going to empty the quote bin this quarter.

Well, let’s just say things are different in 2021.

As we have noted previously, one cannot practically ignore the celebration regarding our annual lap around the sun, although I think it’s fair to say that there are roughly 7.5 billion people outside of Silicon Valley—or those who run large cap growth/tech funds—that are delighted to see 2020 declared over.

It would be correct to say that a number of us have had a little more “alone” time on our hands over the last 6 months and it is also correct to note that the online world provides many chances to waste said time. Which brings me to Mr. T of A-Team fame, who for completely nostalgic and personal family reasons, comes to the fore at particular times with his “I Pity the Fool” meme.

• How this environment stacks up in a 36-year value investing career
• 5 things we think are important for our investors
• What we are actually doing in our portfolios right now

We spend a lot of time in these pages endeavoring to wax poetically about the world at large and our investment place within it, even though that is not really what we do for a living. We get it. Some people just want to know our thoughts about the investment world…and yes, we do have opinions on that subject.

Despite Sauron and Einstein’s failed attempts at unified theory, 2019 was simply the tenth year whereby interest rates were low and went lower, credit remained both cheap and plentiful, the economy was “good enough,” and those who can print money re-dedicated themselves to a willingness to print money. The logical conclusion to this set of events is to buy and hold U.S. equities. Drop the mic—again.