Scott Williams – Fiftyone Capital

Scott Williams is the Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer of Fiftyone Capital – an experienced financial services professional specialising in stock selection, portfolio management and corporate advisory.

What was the first stock you ever bought?
Cervantes Gold, I bought it when I started work experience at a broking firm and this was the ‘hot stock’ at the time. Pretty sure I lost about half my very small investment on it. First trade, a loser!

What is your firm’s investment philosophy?
To preserve and grow our capital over time. We do this by investing with conviction in our best ideas while mitigating downside risk by short selling the worst companies.

How are you managing the current COVID-19 situation on the personal front and on the business front?
We saw the virus spreading very early as we are a global fund and follow international news. We started reducing our exposures significantly which helped us navigate the market fall very well. As our business runs from the cloud, we managed the work from home part very easily.

What are the top 3 qualities any good investor should have?
Ability to think for themselves and not follow the crowd, having conviction to back their ideas and be able to get out, take your medicine and move on if they get it wrong.

What is your favourite book?
So many. I tend to like personal development and finance books. So Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope I thought were excellent recently.

Which industries in Australia have caught your interest?
Australia is such a small part of the global investment markets. But we do really like a couple Aussie biotech stocks that we have written about quite a lot (PAR & IXC). Relative to international peers some of these companies trade well below valuations we think they could once they get further along the commercial development pipeline. Being in Australia they are probably under the radar… for now!

How can people connect with you?
Email:
Website: https://www.fiftyonecapital.com/