| Account | Shares | Price | Value | % of acct | Cost/sh | Gain $ | Gain % | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RLT | 4 | $586.30 | $2,345 | 0.14% | $542.55 | $175 | +8.1% | — |
In short: BUY. ER 12.56%; fwd PE 29.2 vs 39.6 (26.3% under); RDCF 13.1% vs 12.5%.
In short: Favourite #3 — "An essential market index provider that legally locks in trillions of investment dollars." "Changing a fund's benchmark index is a huge, costly legal headache. This gives MSCI a lot of pricing power and it locks in clients for life." Metrics: revenue +12.6%, EPS +16.9%, gross margin 82.3%, ROIC 26.3%. Chart: AUM in ETFs linked to MSCI equity indexes $744bn (2017) → $2.82trn LTM, a 15.9% CAGR, with the one down year in 2022. No valuation.
MSCI builds stock-market indexes — lists like "MSCI World" or "MSCI Emerging Markets" that funds copy or measure themselves against — and sells the data behind them. Index funds pay it a fee based on how much money follows its lists, and that money has grown from about $0.7 trillion in 2017 to about $2.8 trillion.
The argument is that switching is painful: a fund's benchmark is written into its legal documents, so changing it is costly and slow, and customers tend to stay for good. That gives MSCI room to raise prices. The post lists strong growth and margins but gives no view on the share price.
In short: BUY. ER 12.46%; fwd PE 29.2 against a 39.6 average (26.3% under); RDCF 13.1% required vs 12.5% expected (−0.6pp). Flat on the year (−1.3%) and flat over five (−1.3%), against a 20.4% ten-year CAGR.
In short: Named as the second member of the index oligopoly ("Indexes: S&P Global, MSCI, FTSE Russell"). Structural reference only.
In short: BUY, up 6.7% on the year. FV $846.5 vs $603.1 = 28.8% under; fwd PE 29.2 against 39.6 (26.3% under); RDCF 10.5% vs 12.5% expected — positive, where June's was negative.
In short: BUY, and one of the few index-adjacent names up on the year (+8.9%). FV $849.9 vs $615.5 = 27.6% under; fwd PE 29.2 against 39.6 (26.3% under); RDCF 13.7% required vs 12.5% expected — marginally negative.
In short: Same good-but-not-owned data/index group as FactSet; durable, but not one of his chosen two.
18:01That's when phase one and phase 2 come to a conclusion. We also have companies that I believe still have the distribution, the longevity, the customer lock-in, the unique data sets, all the stuff that will make these companies not commoditize. That's S&P Global, Moody's, FactSet, MSCI. We also have companies that are at some risk in some aspects of AI, but overall they have a lot of non-AI aspects, and I'd put Uber and DoorDash in that category.
In short: BUY. EPS growth 12.5%, dividend 1.4%, FWD PE 29.2 against a fair exit 25.0, expected return 12.5%, fair value 825.3 against 588.0 = 28.8% undervalued. Best Buy #3 four days earlier.
In short: Best Buy #3. "MSCI continues to be the Toll Bridge of the global investment industry", earning both asset-based fees on every ETF tracking an MSCI index and high-margin data subscriptions. Q1 2026 revenue $850.8m, up from $745.8m. The AI fear is named and answered in one line: "creating an index is easy, but creating an index that every pension fund and bank in the world trusts and has integrated into their software for 30 years is nearly impossible." Also classified as a Cannibal Stock — free cash flow spent on buybacks, "meaning your ownership of the business just gets bigger and bigger."
MSCI creates the stock market indexes that funds are measured against, and charges a small fee on every dollar tracking one — more than $18 trillion in total. It also sells data and analytics software to the same customers, which is the higher-margin half.
Investors have marked the shares down on the fear that artificial intelligence will let any firm build its own indexes. The answer given is precise: building an index is trivial, and always was. What is not trivial is getting every pension fund and bank in the world to trust yours, and to have wired it into their systems for thirty years. That is the actual product.
The business is not slowing: revenue in the first quarter of 2026 was $850.8 million against $745.8 million a year earlier. And MSCI spends its considerable spare cash buying back its own shares, so an investor who does nothing owns a slightly larger slice of the company each year.
In short: Buy candidate #5. "MSCI's indexes are a global standard, making it a toll booth business with high switching costs. Once a fund is tied to an MSCI index, it almost never leaves. The business is capital-light and generates high recurring revenue regardless of daily market swings… a very long and predictable runway." Priced at $486 on 26 April; Best Buy #3 on 3 May.
MSCI builds the indexes that investment funds measure themselves against, and takes a fee from every fund that tracks one. It also sells the data and analytics those funds run on.
Once a fund adopts an MSCI benchmark it effectively cannot leave — clients and analysts expect that yardstick and changing it looks like moving the goalposts. So the revenue is recurring, the business needs very little capital, and the fees keep arriving whatever the market does that week.
That last point is exactly why it appears on this list: the issue's new priority is businesses whose earnings compound smoothly and predictably, and an index licensor is close to the purest example available.
In short: "A toll booth on Wall Street" — over $18trn of assets benchmarked to MSCI indices, with a fee on every fund that tracks one, plus analytics and ESG data. ~97% of revenue is subscription or index-linked, and "nearly 50 cents in cash from every dollar in revenue." Switching costs are social as much as technical: "clients and analysts expect it. Switching would cause outflows." The valuation history is the argument: "MSCI got quite expensive starting in 2019. As a result, the stock has been moving sideways for the past 5 years. The price is up 20% during that time, even though revenue has almost doubled." Target 25x forward = $486 against $592.
MSCI builds the stock market indexes that funds measure themselves against — the MSCI World, for instance. Every fund or ETF that tracks one pays MSCI a fee, and more than $18 trillion is benchmarked to them. It also sells data and analytics software to the same customers.
Once a fund is tied to an MSCI index it almost never switches, and the reason is social rather than technical: clients and analysts expect that benchmark, and changing it would look like moving the goalposts and trigger withdrawals. About 97% of revenue is subscriptions or index-linked fees, and roughly half of every dollar of revenue turns into cash.
The interesting part is what has happened to the shares. Over five years the price is up 20% while revenue has almost doubled. The business kept compounding; investors simply became willing to pay a much lower multiple for it. That gap between a business improving and a share price not moving is exactly the situation this portfolio is betting on across its holdings.
Still not cheap enough, though. The stated buying level is 25 times forward earnings, about $486 against a market price of $592.
In short: Best Buy #3 (repeat from March). Two revenue engines: asset-based fees on every MSCI-linked ETF (over $2.3trn and rising) and high-margin data/analytics subscriptions growing ~10%/yr with retention consistently above 90%. "The shift from active to passive investing is an unstoppable structural trend." Also a cannibal stock buying back shares. Investors fear AI hurts analytics or lets firms build custom indices free — "Insiders don't seem worried, they've been buying shares recently. This makes sense, as MSCI currently trades near its cheapest valuation level of the past 10 years."
MSCI gets paid twice for the same work. It builds the indexes that ETFs track, collecting a small percentage of the money invested in every fund with an MSCI name on it — more than $2.3 trillion and rising, because money keeps moving from active funds to passive ones. And it sells data and analytics software to banks and asset managers by subscription, growing about 10% a year with over 90% of customers renewing, because once its data is wired into a firm's systems, pulling it out is a project nobody wants.
Investors fear AI will erode the analytics business, or that firms will build their own custom indexes free. Slegers answers with two observations rather than an argument: MSCI is buying back its own shares consistently, so each remaining share owns more of it, and insiders have been buying recently while the stock sits near its cheapest valuation in ten years.
In short: BUY. 28.3x forward against a 39.6x five-year average (28.5% under), expected return 12.7%, and nearly flat on the year (−0.9%) — but the reverse DCF dissents by −1.2pp, requiring 13.7% growth against 12.5% expected.
In short: Best Buy #1. "The standard for investment indices" — every MSCI-linked ETF pays a fee on assets under management, with over $2.3trn linked to its indexes and 1,400+ ETFs. Index and analytics both retain above 90%. "Just like Fair Isaac and S&P Global, MSCI is a classic toll-bridge business." Investors fear AI hurts the analytics business; "short-term stock price moves don't change the underlying economics." It is also a cannibal stock buying back heavily — "Just like for KKR, insiders are heavily buying shares today."
MSCI builds the stock-market indexes that funds track. When you buy an ETF with "MSCI World" or "MSCI ACWI" in its name, the fund pays MSCI a small slice of the money it manages, forever, simply for using the index. More than $2.3 trillion is linked to MSCI indexes and over 1,400 ETFs reference its data — so as the world keeps shifting from active funds to passive ones, MSCI's fee base grows without it doing anything new. It also sells data and analytics software to banks and asset managers, which is deeply embedded once installed: retention runs above 90%.
Investors have marked it down on the fear that AI will erode the analytics business or let firms build their own indexes free. Slegers' answer is that the economics haven't changed and the passive trend hasn't stopped. Two supporting signals: MSCI consistently buys back its own shares (a "cannibal stock", so each remaining share owns more), and insiders have been buying recently — the people with the best information voting with their own money.
In short: Named alongside KKR as a company "where insiders are now buying shares" — cited as evidence for the open-market-purchase criterion rather than analysed. It becomes Best Buy #1 in March, where the same observation reappears as "Just like for KKR, insiders are heavily buying shares today."
In short: BUY. 28.7x forward against a 39.6x average (27.5% under), a 12.8% expected return and an $889.7 fair value against $602.58 (32.3% under); the reverse DCF is marginally against (14.4% required vs 12.9% expected). A 24.9% ten-year CAGR. It becomes Best Buy #1 in March.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.