We believe in long-term investing at Morningstar. We believe that taking a long-term view is the best way that individual investors can cut through market noise and achieve their investing goals. Over the long-term the driver of returns is the ability of quality companies to deliver results in all market environments.  

Finding great companies means looking for key attributes that will enable a company to thrive no matter what is happening in the broader economy. The first attribute is to find companies that can keep competitors at bay. The inherent competition in capitalism is great for us as consumers but leads to poor outcomes as investors. We want to invest in companies that have a sustainable competitive advantage or moat. Moats matter over the long-term. John Reckenthaler showed proof in this recent article.

Quality investing is picking certain attributes that can be used to identify the best companies. A company with a moat is certainly one factor but we also want to identify companies that have strong finances and earn high returns on investments that are made to grow the business. There are ETFs that use quality factors to identify the best businesses.

Here are a few of our best resources for finding quality investments:

Mark put together a summary of how to find a great company to buy, delving into moats and why they are important.

Shani goes through whether quality investing is for you in this article.

Price still matters and Mark goes through a checklist for valuing a share. 

Shani wrote an article on the different financial ratios that can be used when identifying good investment opportunities. Her article looks at different measures of profitability and how they apply to different types of companies. 

This Investing Compass episode goes through quality investing.

Mark covers off how to identify great companies during this webinar (below) on evaluating shares.