How to Evaluate Company Management Before Investing
How to evaluate company management is the question that separates amateur stock pickers from serious investors. You can find a business with a wide moat, strong cash flows, and a reasonable price – and still lose money if the people running it are incompetent or dishonest. The CEO is the capital allocator in chief. Every dollar the company earns passes through their decision-making. Buy back shares or build a new headquarters? Invest in R&D or acquire a competitor? Return cash to shareholders or light it on fire with a vanity project? These choices compound over years and decades, and they are the difference between a stock that 10x’s and one that slowly bleeds to zero.