In a rare moment of unity, American politicians seem to agree on one thing: big tech is bad. From Senator Josh Hawley on the right to Senator Elizabeth Warren on the left, the calls to rein in or break up major tech companies are getting louder. They’re tapping into a classic David-and-Goliath story that plays well with the public.
I’ve spent a lot of time making the case for technology stocks, so it’s a bit ironic that my whole investment journey started with HEICO, a company that’s anything but digital. It was HEICO’s combination of a low-cost advantage and a tiny slice of a massive market that really opened my eyes. It taught me to hunt for businesses with both a competitive moat and the potential for exponential growth. As it turned out, when I applied this lens to the market in the early 2000s, about 90% of the companies that fit were in tech. But that other 10% was fascinating.
To be successful with , you have to know what a business is worth. But what if the old rulebook for valuing companies is broken?
If you look at Alphabet (Google's parent company) and Amazon, you might assume Alphabet is the better business. It's mostly software-based and doesn't require a lot of physical assets to run—a model of a modern, efficient company. Amazon, on the other hand, has old-school bones. It has poured billions into building out a massive physical network for its e-commerce business and has done the same for its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services.
When it comes to , price is the variable that can single-handedly veto any deal. You can love a business and admire its management, but if the price isn’t right, you have to walk away. This principle of triangulating between price and value—asking, “What am I getting for what I’m paying?”—is the backbone of any sound investment strategy. At a certain point, even the most incredible business becomes a bad investment if it’s overpriced.
In 1950, a young Warren Buffett from Omaha walked into Benjamin Graham’s class at Columbia Business School and found a system that felt like a revelation. For anyone wondering , Graham’s method was like a perfect cookbook: a formulaic, easy-to-follow guide with strict rules. It was a framework that would help turn Buffett into a billionaire. But over time, the student realized the world had changed, and the teacher’s old recipes were no longer enough.
Benjamin Graham, the man who would become known as the father of modern security analysis, was an intellectual at heart. He spoke seven languages and could quote classic authors in their native French, German, or ancient Greek. He was also famously absent-minded, known for inventing a new slide rule while also showing up to work in mismatched shoes. After graduating from Columbia in just two and a half years, he turned down teaching positions in math, English, and philosophy to support his family, choosing the one field with the highest earning potential: finance.
My early picture of Wall Street was a complete caricature. When I started my finance career twenty-five years ago, I imagined a world of testosterone-fueled cowboys and sharks, shouting into phones and waving their arms on the stock exchange floor. I couldn't have been more wrong.
My wife is a fantastic gardener. Every season, she's out there with a specific set of tasks—weeding, pruning, checking for pests. If she skips this routine, the garden she works so hard on won't flourish. It needs constant care and maintenance to produce the results she wants.