Martin Capital Management Founder and Chief Investment Officer Reveals his Secret for Perpetual Returns

October 1, 2018

Frank Martin, CFA, is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer at Martin Capital Management, LLC. Mr. Martin has 45 years of investment industry experience. While a partner at McDonald & Company, he founded McDonald Capital Management in 1987; he acquired and changed its name to Martin Capital Management. Mr. Martin holds a B.A. in investment management from Northwestern University and an MBA with honors from Indiana University at South Bend. Mr. Martin is on the boards of various charitable organizations.  In this exclusive 4,206 word interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Martin reveals the market experience and insight that has fueled his long and successful career.

The basic touchstone of Frank Martin’s investing philosophy is absolute return:

“Absolute is one part of the two-word definition, and that means that we don’t want to suffer significant drawdowns. So our competitors would be considered relative return. If a relative return manager is assessing his own performance, and the market’s down 50%, and he’s down 40%, he thinks he had a good year. An absolute return investor who was down more than 10% and the market was down 50% thinks he has an awful year. Now, whether he can be aggressive enough to think he could actually be in the black, that’s another point.”

In order to attain this level of perpetual returns, Mr. Martin likes to remind his clients of the Einstein proverbs regarding investing:

“…We both have heard the Albert Einstein quotes about the theory of compound interest being the most powerful force in the universe. And as it relates to what I do more personally, there is another quote, that’s not as famous, and that is again from Einstein, and he says, “He who understands it,” that is compound interest, “earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.” So that’s kind of our mandate and living out that mandate over the 50-plus years I’ve been in the business.”

In order to get the details on the portfolio of Frank Martin of Martin Capital, read the entire 4,206 interview in the Wall Street Transcript.