It is our pleasure to bring you an exclusive interview with Spanish value investor Javier Ruiz, Fund Manager at the highly regarded investment firm Metagestión. This interview was conducted in 2016.
MOI Global: Please tell us about your background and the genesis of Metagestión.
Javier Ruiz: Metagestión is an independent investment boutique with more than thirty years of existence, which has followed a value investing approach for fifteen years. I joined Metagestión in 2007 as an analyst and management assistant. To be honest, starting an investment career at the peak of the global credit bubble was the best school I could have attended.
At that time we had a quantitative bias, investing in companies with low multiples without giving any weight to industrial or company qualitative factors. This strategy worked for some time, but when the credit bubble burst we found out that a high percentage of our investments were, using Warren Buffett’s analogy, “swimming naked”. They became painful value traps which could have been avoided by giving more importance to qualitative analysis.
For this reason, after being named CIO of Metagestión in 2012 – and especially with the later additions of Alejandro Martín and Miguel Rodríguez to the team – we started investing more in a Buffett way, with very good results. Our value investing funds Metavalor and Metavalor Internacional have been among the best in their universe since then. In the case of Metavalor, it is the best performer in the Spanish Equity category over three, five, and ten years and has been awarded as the best Spanish Equity fund by Morningstar (2015, 2016) and by Expansión-AllFunds (2015, 2016).
MOI: How do you define your investment universe?
Members, log in below to access the restricted content.
Not a member?
Thank you for your interest. Please note that MOI Global is closed to new members at this time. If you would like to join the waiting list, complete the following form:
About The Author: MOI Global Editorial Team
The MOI Global Editorial Team, led by John Mihaljevic, CFA, includes community builders, event organizers, writers, editors, research associates, security analysts, and fanatical member support advocates. Our sole purpose is to serve the members of MOI Global as well as we possibly can in order to help them learn, invest intelligently, and build lifelong friendships with like-minded people.
Who is MOI Global? In recent years, The Manual of Ideas has expanded to become more than simply “the very best investing newsletter on the planet” (Mohnish Pabrai). We are now a thriving global community of intelligent investors, connected through great ideas, thought-provoking interviews, online conferences, live member events, and much more.
Members of MOI Global enjoy complimentary access to a growing array of resources and content related to the art of intelligent investing. Members also enjoy preferential access to selected offline events as well as exclusive access to other events hosted by MOI Global, including the Zurich Project Summit, the Latticework Conference, and Ideaweek.
More posts by MOI Global Editorial Team