Key insights
- The author describes an investment strategy focused on identifying well-regarded companies in the data center and electrical grid sectors based on industry employee sentiment, rather than traditional financial analysis. While the portfolio has outperformed SPY, the approach's classification as 'value investing' is questioned due to the absence of financial metrics in the investment decision-making process. The strategy's success hinges on the accuracy of predicting sector growth and identifying quality contractors through sentiment analysis.
Hi all;
So ~ 2 years ago I saw that the need for data centers was going to keep growing as fast as they could be built. I figured it was too late to invest in the companies building/running data centers.
So I looked for the companies hired to build the centers. And to build out the electrical grid for them. I also looked for pure plays for grid and generation equipment and the only one I found was GEV.
I did not look at the financials for any company. Instead I talked to r/Lineman, r/SubstationTechnician, and r/grid_Ops. I asked them who were the quality contractors. I had lots of conversations with anyone who would comment about this.
And this is how I'm doing. Not bad (the bottom line is the SPY).
Does this count as value investing? I invested on which companies I thought were well run in a given market segment. But I looked at nothing around the companies financials or estimated financials for the sector. Just companies employees spoke well of in a segment I predicted would do well.
???