RWH054: Billionaire Brit w/ Terry Smith

In this episode, William Green chats with British investing legend Terry Smith. Terry, a member of Bloomberg’s index of billionaires, manages the Fundsmith Equity Fund, which is the UK’s largest stock fund. Since 2010, it’s returned more than 600%, beating the MSCI World Index by over 200 percentage points. Here, Terry talks in depth about the skills, personality traits, & principles that catapulted him from poverty to the pinnacle of the investing world.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

00:00 - Intro

04:01 - How Terry Smith was shaped by poverty & violence.

35:17 - How he achieved fame by exposing financial deception.

39:26 - What he looks for when identifying great businesses.

46:54 - Why many of his favorite companies are 100 years old.

51:56 - Which sectors he shuns & which he likes.

58:42 - How Microsoft embodies what he loves in a business.

1:00:29 - Why it’s worth paying up for the best companies.

1:20:15 - Why the US is his favorite place to invest.

1:21:44 - How being a CEO made him a better investor.

1:32:07 - What he learned from Sir John Templeton.

1:35:46 - Why he refuses to speak with brokers or read their research.

1:40:30 - Why it’s hard to be successful professionally & personally.

1:52:46 - Why he’s deeply skeptical about Tesla.

Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

• Terry Smith’s investment firm, Fundsmith.
• Terry Smith’s book, Investing for Growth.
• Terry Smith’s book, Accounting for Growth.
• William Green’s book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” – read the reviews of this book.
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• Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes here.
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