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Lessons from Nomad Investment Partnership Letters — Part 1
Nicholas Sleep (Nick) and Qais Zakaria (Zak) don’t have the same name recognition as investors like Bill Miller, Charlie Munger, or Warren Buffet. That’s a shame. The duo ran Nomad Investment Partnership, generating annualized returns of over 20% between September 2001 and December 2013. Over the same period, the MSCI World Index returned 6.5% annually.
Nomad’s biannual investment letters were released in December. Over the next few weeks I’ll be highlighting key themes from the letters, starting with Nomad’s investment process and philosophy.
Flexibility: Scoring a Date on Saturday Night
Nick and Zak were generalists with a wide mandate and a long time horizon. Nomad’s portfolio reflected this broad, flexible approach. Over the years, investments included British bus companies (Stagecoach), Filipino cement makers (Union Cement), Scandinavian newspapers (Schibsted), and South African casinos (Kersaf) as well as American stalwarts like Amazon and Costco.
Pragmatism drove Nomad’s approach. The partnership wrote in its 2006 annual letter:
Woody Allen once quipped that being bisexual doubled the chances of a date on Saturday night, curiously that principle also applies to investing.
