December 2022 Perspectives for 2023 2023 has started strong for both the capital markets and Somar. While the market tailwind is helpful, we believe 2023 faces a wide dispersion of outcomes both for the global economy and for different regions. In addition, we expect 2023 to impact different industries and business models differently, given differentiated […]
April 2022 A Bedrock for Prosperity During the depth of the 2008 financial crisis, I confirmed my calling to be an investor. The financial system was melting down. People were questioning whether Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley were going to make it. Some even questioned capitalism itself. Yet, despite all these sobering headlines, I loved […]
February 2022 Discontinuities Vladimir Lenin is credited as saying: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” This seems description of the recent weeks. The war in Ukraine came as a surprise to many and re-focused the priorities of western politicians and businesses. Energy security became a top priority. Supply […]
January 2022 Short Investing We have an opportunity to generate material profits from our short investments over the next few years. This should be additive to our long performance. Last year we generated profits on our short book, even inthe face of rising markets. That has continued in 2022, although helped by more volatile markets. […]
November 2021 Year in Review The end of the calendar year is a great time to reflect on our progress over the past 12 months. While our performance was below our expectations and ambitions, we made great progress on our short book with high alpha generation; our long investments boosted their respective market share […]
September 2021 An Inefficient Market Most recent market comments center on how high valuations are, descriptions of risks around the corner (inflation, China Evergrande, pandemic) and the bubble-like behavior in certain market segments (Crypto, NFTs, Late-stage mega private rounds in start-ups). It seems the most conventional place to deploy capital is in large, mega-cap index […]
August 2021 Large Fundraising is not Value Creation In your daily reading you may have noticed an increase in the number and amount of venture fundraising for startups and early-stage companies. Not long ago, a venture capital fund with more than 1 billion USD was a rarity. No more. There are now quite a few […]
July 2021 The Short Game The Short Game In the last year we have focused on significantly upgrading our short book and our short investment process. We are seeing good early results. We are getting more and more ideas that return more than 10%, which means the stock declines 10% or more from the average […]
June 2021 Playing the Long Game At Somar we are very bullish on the impact of technology and innovation in the lives of consumers around the world. We have written about this in previous letters and in our fortnightly Sunday e-mails. The advent of the internet, augmented by the high penetration of smartphones, means we […]
May 2021 Somar Turns 5! It has been five years since Somar launched. We are just getting started and we believe that we can do better in the next five years than we did in the previous five. This is not wishful thinking. This conviction rests on five major improvements we experienced in the past […]