We Don’t Just Buy Stocks. We Invest in Businesses.

By James Mineman on October 16, 2026

Most people see the word “stock,” and they immediately think about a ticker symbol, a chart, or where the price moved today.

We think about something different.

Behind every stock is a real business. It has customers, employees, products, expenses, competitors, and a management team making decisions every day. The stock price may move every day, but the business itself changes much more slowly.

For that reason, we look beyond the stock price and try to understand the company the same way a business owner would evaluate a business.

A business owner would not decide to buy a company based on one news headline or a single quarter of results. They would want to know whether the revenue is growing, if the business is earning a healthy profit, and if its leadership is making good decisions with the cash the business produces.

Those are the types of questions we ask as investors as well.

Earnings reports, SEC filings, investor presentations and management commentary all provide a great deal of information for public companies. The real challenge is not in finding information. It’s knowing what matters.

We spend time looking past the headline numbers to understand what is driving the business, what may be changing and if the underlying fundamentals of the company still support owning it long term.

Revenue: Is the business growing?

Revenue is the money a company brings in from selling its products or services. Growth can show that a company is bringing in new customers, keeping existing ones, moving into new markets or finding ways to provide more value.

But growing sales is only part of the story.

If it costs too much to create that growth, it may not be sustainable. We want to understand not just if a business is growing, but how it is growing and whether that growth can continue.

Margins: What does the company keep?

Revenue is important, but so is what a company keeps after paying the costs of doing business.

That is where margins come in. Simply put, margins help show how much profit a company makes from each dollar of sales.

A company that can grow revenue while maintaining or improving its margins may be becoming more efficient or strengthening its position in the market. A company that grows sales but has to give up more and more to expenses may have a more difficult path ahead.

Sales are important. Profitable sales are better.

Asset productivity: Is the company making good use of its resources?

We also consider how well a company uses what it already owns.

This could include inventory, equipment, real estate, technology or cash. The question is: whether the company is earning an appropriate return from the money it is investing in the business?

Management teams make important choices with the cash their companies generate. They can reinvest in the business, make acquisitions, pay down debt, buy back shares, or return cash to shareholders.

We want to own businesses led by people who make sound decisions about where to invest the company’s money.

A good business must still be a sensible investment

Finding a strong company is only part of the work.

Because we primarily invest in individual companies, we also consider what we are being asked to pay to own them.

Even a great company can be a poor investment at the wrong price.

That is why we don’t think of stocks as just ticker symbols. We think of them as ownership stakes in real businesses. Our job is to understand those businesses and determine whether we believe they are worth owning for the long term.