Competitive Advantage

We use a “shopping list” approach in our investing to better understand a group of companies well before we buy them into portfolios.  I think of it like Chipotle – hours spent preparing beef, salsa and guac but ready quickly when you order.  Part of our process is simple – call each company to further understand what makes their business inevitable and difficult to compete with.  We have been talking with all our companies again over the past six months.  One of our prime directives is to monitor the competitive “moat” to ensure it’s getting deeper and wider over time.  A further advantage of doing this is to get a deeper understanding of what we own and could own from our list and seeking to own more of (what we consider to be) the best companies.