History of the “Firm”

First off, I use the term “firm” very loosely because we do not actually exist in any legal or professional way. We are just a group of friends who share an interest in investing and are constantly learning and striving to outperform the stock market despite the numerous investing mistakes we have made and surely will make in the future.

With that said, the “Firm” informally began when we, the Partners, were in college together at the University of Georgia. Two of us were finance majors who had been interested in investing for several years and one of us was studying history and education and barely knew anything about finance or investing initially. However, the interest in investing is highly infectious and our history major friend/roommate was quickly sucked into the hobby.

This began a series of conversations about the stock market and investing throughout the remainder of our time in college together. We would share stock ideas, discuss investing strategies, and debate the merits of what we were investing in.

Eventually, we all graduated from UGA and went off to start our careers in finance and education. However, we remained interested in the stock market, so we formed Peacock Investment Partners as a way to continue our investing education together and engage in friendly competition (see “What We Do” below).

Why Peacock?

The one and only decoration in our college apartment was a golden peacock that hung on the wall above the couch in the living room. It was such an odd thing to have in a living room shared by three college students that our apartment became known for it and was even called “The Peacock Palace” by some. So, when we were deciding what to name our investing group, Peacock was the obvious choice.

The Competition

Peacock was founded on April 1, 2021 as a friendly competition among the founding partners. The rules of the game are simple:

  • 1. Pitch

    Every year in April, each partner would pitch their favorite stock or investment idea to the others who would question and attempt to poke hole in it relentlessly.

  • 2. Invest

    We would then vote on whether we should add the stock to our portfolio or not. If the stock is accepted, we would add it to our portfolio in a set amount of $1,000.

  • 3. Evaluate

    The portfolio would then be evaluated annually. The partner whose stock performed the worst each year would have to buy the others dinner, and the partner whose stock performed the best would win an enormous prize: bragging rights.

So far, we have completed two years of the competition. In 2021, The Value won with Box, Inc. (BOX) and in 2022, The Expert won with Element Fleet Management Corp. (ELEEF).  Additionally, in April 2023, we had our third annual Peacock Investment Partners meeting where the stocks for 2023 were pitched and added to the portfolio.

Our Investment Philosophy

We have no one clearly defined investment strategy. This is because each of the Partners have their own beliefs and strengths when it comes to investing. However, we do have some guiding philosophies we try to adhere to when pitching stocks for the Annual Meetings:

  • We aim to invest across multiple industry verticals in high quality businesses with exceptional growth potential, strong balance sheets, and compelling competitive advantages.

  • We exclusively invest in public companies and focus primarily on small and mid cap stocks. We believe that these types of securities often present unique opportunities to outperform the market due to the lack of mainstream coverage. This allows us to gain an edge with our abundant research and industry expertise.

  • We take a long term view of investing, and we will not buy a stock unless we expect to hold it for at least 3 to 5 years.

Purpose of This Website

We decided to create this website as a way to track our performance and continue our investing education, and our Memos will serve as a way for us to explore investing topics, share financial analyses, write reviews of books we have read about investing, and share resources we think could be useful for ones investing journey. The hope is that this website will keep us accountable for growing our knowledge of investing, and we hope that you decide to learn with us.