discipline. With hindsight, our capital cycle approach has failed at times when we have underestimated the impact on industries of political and legal interference, disruptive technologies and globalisation.

In our view, their intrinsic valuation is so uncertain that owning the shares is pure speculation.

so essential, in fact, that customers pay little attention to what they’re being charged.

when analyzing the prospects of both value and growth stocks, it is necessary to take into account asset growth, at both the company and the sectoral level.

A basic industry with few players, rational management, barriers to entry, a lack of exit barriers and non-complex rules of engagement is the perfect setting for companies to engage in cooperative behaviour.

Capital cycle analysis is really about how competitive advantage changes over time, viewed from an investor’s perspective.

In other words, capital cycle analysis was all about the drivers of mean reversion.

•When policymakers interfere with the capital cycle, the market-clearing process may be arrested. New technologies can also disrupt the normal operation of the capital cycle.

Marathon’s private ownership and longstanding client relationships enable the firm to adopt a long-term approach, more tolerant of benchmark deviation, which is necessary to apply capital cycle analysis.