our investment philosophy
high conviction long term strategy
Ben Jones Investments provides high conviction investment ideas on listed equities through fundamental bottom-up research. We analyse businesses that we believe trade to a discount against their intrinsic value with a wide margin of safety. Our aim is to generate investment ideas capable of long-term sustainable returns on capital.
As generalists, we cover a range of businesses listed on the exchanges of developed markets. The listings are predominantly US and UK, although they can vary. Our market cap coverage also varies with our smallest cap being $100m and our largest $6bn.
Our philosophy is to look at businesses as if we were owners of the full business. We are more concerned with cash generation and the business’s ability to generate cash in 5 and 10 years’ time. Given our focus on long-term fundamentals, we expect our ideas to last for many years and any adverse movements in share price can create future opportunities from existing ideas. This requires a patient and pragmatic approach, but it’s one we believe offers long-term out-size returns on capital.
margin of safety
Margin of safety really forms the cornerstone of our research and investment ideas. We assess it in two different ways. The first margin of safety is the gap between market value and our assessment of the intrinsic value of a company. This allows for margin of error in forecasting and skews risk-return in favour of the investor. The second margin of safety is our assessment of the economic advantage possessed by a company that can allow it to outperform over long periods of time. Examples of economic advantage may include cost advantages, brand strength, dominant market position (particularly in industries with high barriers to entry), and monopolistic advantages among others.