SIMON BROWN: I’m chatting with Craig Antonie, CIO at AnBro Capital Investments. Craig, I always appreciate the time from you. Market concentration – I’m seeing a lot of this in my email inbox. I’m seeing a lot of concern on the Twitters and other social media. I suppose let’s start with what is market concentration?
SIMON BROWN: Yes, and I want to delve into that because of course you run the Unicorn Fund. But before we do, essentially what this is telling us is that there is this handful of stocks and they are absolutely tech stocks. Amazon – I think actually the categorisation there is consumer, but nonetheless what it is telling us is that the other stocks perhaps aren’t performing as well.
SIMON BROWN: That’s a great point, and there are a couple of points I want to pick up on here. The first is that you make the point around interest rates and what they are designed to do. High rates are designed to slow things down and by default therefore bring inflation down.
CRAIG ANTONIE: Well yes, you’re a hundred percent right. I think what’s happened there – and this is the sort of crazy time I guess we are in – you mentioned earnings that these companies are delivering, and how well they’re doing. And they are. These are very much the best stocks or companies of our time and of our generation. And earnings are growing, they continue to grow and they’re growing at above average rates.
SIMON BROWN: Yes. There is almost a sense of schizophrenia. But I like your point that these Metas and Microsofts and Amazons are almost the new utilities. I’d never thought of it from that angle. They’re as much as part of my daily life as electricity and water is.