Amit Wadhwaney, founding partner and portfolio manager at Moerus Capital Management, joins hosts Tano Santos and Michael Mauboussin to trace his unorthodox journey from Bombay to Concordia to founding a value investing firm focused on the balance sheet. Along the way, he discusses his early exposure to Marty Whitman, lessons from Third Avenue's international expansion, and what led him to start Moerus.
Amit outlines the core of his investment approach—asset-based valuation, downside protection, and long-term holding periods—and explains why macro factors are typically disqualifiers, not drivers, in his process. He shares insights into portfolio construction, the role of currency risk, and how Moerus identified undervalued opportunities in places like Argentina, Japan, and the gold sector.
Key Topics:
● Growing up in India and finding investing through chemical engineering and economics (3:04)
● Discovering Marty Whitman via an obscure academic book on value investing (5:05)
● Lessons from selling real estate during Quebec's post-referendum panic (9:23)
● Joining MJ Whitman and watching Third Avenue evolve (11:12)
● Pioneering international value investing at Third Avenue (17:05)
● Founding Moerus Capital: philosophy, culture, and investment constraints (24:38)
● Moerus's asset-based investment framework (28:48)
● Managing macro risk and volatility through conservatism, not forecasts (30:41)
● Risk management: internal, external, and business model-related risks (33:00)
● Portfolio construction, position sizing, and concentration limits (46:39)
● Currency exposure and when to hedge (49:12)
● Case studies: Grupo Galicia and Despegar during Argentina's political shift (51:15)
● What keeps Amit up at night: industrial policy, broken immigration, and political gridlock (1:00:52)
● What Amit is reading—and what the Norton Simon Museum can teach investors (1:03:39)
● And much more!
Mentioned in this Episode:
● Moerus Capital Management
● Third Avenue Management
● MJ Whitman
● Marty Whitman
● Grupo Financiero Galicia
● Despegar.com
● Wheaton Precious Metals
● Major Drilling Group
● Dundee Corporation
● UniCredit
● LATAM Airlines
● Journal of Economic Literature
● Shubik and Whitman's The Aggressive Conservative Investor
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