For Three Funds, a Front-Row Seat on a Rally

I thought the comment below was interesting. I think I remember reading an interview with Ron Baron a couple of years ago where he also gave this as a reason for avoiding investing in insurance companies (if you happen to know where this was, please send me and email and let me know: valueinvestingworld@gmail.com).

Mr. Ende seeks out well-run companies, rather than betting on sectors or macroeconomic trends, but he does have one sector-specific rule: he shuns banks and insurers.

“If you own a bank or an insurance company, you basically don’t know what’s in its portfolio, and you have to depend on your warm, fuzzy feelings about management,” he said. “And then, every 10 years, you find that they blow up.” That happened with the recent real estate crash but also with earlier debacles like the Latin American debt crisis and the savings-and-loan scandal in the United States.