A stock investor should not be too concerned with erratic fluctuations in stock prices, since in the short term, the stock market behaves like a voting machine, but in the long term it acts like a weighing machine (i.e. its true value will in the long run be reflected in its stock price). – Benjamin Graham, 'The Dean of Wall Street'

Our proprietary process seeks to identify those companies trading at a discount to their true worth whilst, not surprisingly, avoiding those companies trading at a premium.  Responsibility for this goal rests with our team of highly qualified and experienced share investment professionals.

In order to assess a company's earnings and dividend generation potential for share investments, we maintain that it is necessary to fully understand the company's key business drivers, the strength of its strategy, financial condition, management and board as well as the relevant industry fundamentals.

We achieve this by having a very good look "under the bonnet"; that is, through first hand contact with the company management, its customers, competitors and industry analysts.  A great deal of time and resources are committed to this research, meaning our staff are regularly out in the field, examining company operations and meeting with senior management and company directors.

Disciplined adherence to our process ensures that we avoid the temptation to run with the herd.  Accordingly we tend to buy a share that is currently "out of favour" whilst avoiding the "hot" stocks at any given time.  Empirical evidence shows that hot growth stocks tend to underperform cheaper less glamorous stocks over the long term.

Brook has consistently maintained that in order to successfully manage NZ share portfolios, it is necessary to have the capacity to undertake research of Australian companies.  We consider it imperative to maintain such a commitment given the increasingly integrated nature of the NZ and Australian economies and the importance of the Australian share investments of a number of NZ companies.

We have included Australian stocks in our portfolios since the inception of our funds and have demonstrated our capacity to consistently outperform the New Zealand benchmark (NZSX50) and the Australian benchmark (All Ordinaries) over the past five years.