Morningstar Advisor - February/March 2013 - (Page 54)
Undiscovered Manager
Lines of Communication
By Michael Brennan
To the team at Conestoga, a key part of investing is openly
discussing the firm’s successes and failures.
To hear them tell their story, the proprietors
of Conestoga Capital Advisors deal as
much in communications as they do in the
mutual funds they operate. Communications
with the companies whose stocks they
buy. Communications with the advisors who
invest in their funds. Communications
with each other. It’s an awful lot of talking in a
business more identified with the top-down
scrutinizing of a sea of metrics. But give
the people at Conestoga enough time and you
might begin to see things their way: that
good investing can be, as much as anything
54 Morningstar Advisor February/March 2013
else, about having your ear to the ground
and seeking out meaningful discussions
with the people with whom you intend to
do business.
the previous several years. For some, it was
immediately a tough sell. “In hindsight,”
Mitchell says, “we started our firm in a very
challenging time period.”
They showed that much right away. In 2002,
it might have appeared that Conestoga
had some explaining to do. Bill Martindale and
Bob Mitchell had just founded the company
with W. Christopher Maxwell and Duane
R. D’Orazio to ply a small-cap strategy in the
aftermath of the dot-com bubble that had
stoked and then set ablaze the markets during
If Conestoga had been founded by less-established proprietors, that might have been
the end of the story. But the team members had
a long track record and a book of loyal
investors who had followed them from their
previous company. They’d proven their
ability to make hay by digging up stocks that
had quietly established track records and
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar Advisor - February/March 2013
Morningstar Advisor - February/March 2013
Contents
Contributors
Letter From the Editor
Social Media, the Old- Fashioned Way
Do You Use Active Strategies?
Youth Appeal
How to Buy the Unloved 2013
Morningstar Managers of the Year
Investments á la Carte
Investment Briefs
Approaches to Absolute-Return Investing
In Agriculture, It’s Good to Be Strong
Yes, There Are Good Active Funds
The Decoupling
Where It Could Pay to Be Active
The Active Fund That Defies Obsolescence
The Epitome of an Active Manager
Lines of Communication
The Existence of Market Timing ‘Intelligence’
A Route to Commodities that Bypasses the Futures Market
Best Positioned for Health-Care Reform
Diversified Stock Funds That Earn Their Stars
Our Favorite Mutual Funds
50 Most-Popular Equity ETFs
Undervalued Stocks With Wide Moats
A Twisted Debate
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