We have not made any prediction about the Stock Market this year, a humble tradition that now spans three decades of professionally managing money. We invest all of our time working inside the market with a rules-based and evidence-tested actively managed portfolio. Our repeatable stock selection process relies on buy and sell disciplines, not opinions.
But for fun, we’ll hazard a guess that the rest of the world is about to unleash a circus of predictions and opinions, between arguments, about an election and the direction of the economy.
What could be fun about that?! If you read this short note you will never again be able to hear another example about ‘how awful it is that…’ without thinking about these two people too busy working to have time for predictions.
Let me tell you about my favorite circus workers of all time.
Doc and Amelia Farmer were married and worked together in a circus, until they both got fired during the Great Depression almost 100 years ago. They had nothing. Many businesses were forced to close for the next several years, there were no jobs for them. So they made their own jobs, collecting dirty rags that factories had thrown away in the trash. The Farmers cleaned the rags the best they could and brought them back to different shops for a couple bucks.
Then they started cleaning the uniforms for factory workers also. Today, they get $1.50 from each uniform they rent to businesses all over the United States. The Farmer family has continued to operate the business and remain the largest stakeholders, but now they have 45k employees working at this business, named Cintas. They have grown from those first few dirty rags to now $10 billion in annual sales. Their average customer has been with them more than 25 years.
Let the circus of predictions of come and go, while you own the antidote to any poison of distraction – simple time tested truths and hard work. Beautifully boring businesses like Cintas are often overlooked by circus crowds chasing the next great game-changing technology. Your antidote for the doomsayers comes with surprising upside the other crowds predicting new areas for booms can also overlook. That rag & uniform cleaner ignores all the scary or excited predictions because it’s too busy outworking them.
In 2024, Cintas is rewarding its stakeholders with a 16% annual dividend raise.
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