Big-Picture Thinking

When I first started in the industry, one of the more popular styles of investing was top-down stock picking; where you made an economic forecast, decided which sectors were going to benefit and then tried to buy the quality names within that sector. Effectively, this approach required investors to focus on the short term; they predicted what economic trends were underway and then adjusted their portfolio accordingly. Value managers generally didn’t, and still don't, believe that the economy could be accurately forecasted in general, and they definitely didn’t believe that it could tell you how to invest.