The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine.
The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.
We're coming off a quarter here that was in-line with our expectations, but much lower at WPZ due to Geismar's extended outage and a continued heavy capital investing period all as was expected.
We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own assets.
Anything can happen anytime in markets. And no advisor, economist, or TV commentator-and definitely not Charlie nor I-can tell you when chaos will occur. Market forecasters will fill your ear but will never fill your wallet.