July feels like it passed in minutes. Yet it also feels like it started about four months ago.

My partner and I moved house three times in three weekends between pet-sitting gigs. We then signed a rental contract to close that chapter at the end of August. I looked after editing our Firstlinks newsletter for most of the month as James recovered from an illness. Oh, and England lost the Euros final. Again.

With all of that going on, I hardly looked at my portfolio and probably felt better for it. I did, however, spend plenty of time thinking about businesses and learning more about ones I might be interested in owning one day.

I started the month by looking at places that companies with Warren Buffett's favourite quality pop up more often than usual. I then highlighted what I consider to be one of Australia’s widest moats – ASX Ltd (ASX: ASX) and its unrivalled position at the centre of Australia’s equity markets.

I own shares in a US based securities exchange and have long been drawn to the network effects and scalability of this industry's winners. You can read more about our analyst Roy Van Keulen’s thoughts on ASX’s moat and its valuation here. 

Staying with Roy for a second, I also caught up with him to talk about one of the newest stocks in our Australian coverage.

Siteminder (ASX: SDR) has become an essential partner for small and medium hotel businesses, and its new offering could add some network effect dynamics into the mix. You can learn more about Siteminder by reading this article or watch Roy tell me why Siteminder is like Shopify for hotels.

We also started covering IGO (ASX: IGO) during the month. In doing so, it joined a group of companies in our global coverage that can be counted on one hand – miners that have been assigned a moat. To learn more about IGO and why our analysts think it deserves a Narrow Moat rating, read my article here or watch my interview with Morningstar analyst Lochlan Halloway.

Speaking of moats, I compared the deeply entrenched position of elite soccer clubs to qualities that our analysts look for in high quality businesses. I also highlighted three Wide Moat companies that have struggled recently and could be “buy the dip” candidates. I say that because their shares have now fallen to levels considerably below our analysts’ estimates of long-term Fair Value.

A lot of my research time during July (and June, actually) was spent trying to understand private credit as an asset class and explore the ‘high returns, lower risk’ proposal being punted to investors. I concluded that the higher potential returns simply seem to reflect higher levels of risk. Otherwise, why would these borrowers put up with much higher interest rates?

To be clear, I don’t doubt that managers that maintain strict underwriting and due diligence standards might be able to deliver good returns. I just think the importance of those two things – especially if the economy goes south – is being overshadowed by the whole “banks stepped back and we filled the void” narrative. If history is a guide, investors should be wary of these standards loosening to capture growing demand. You can read my thoughts here.

If studying private credit for two months doesn’t leave you in need of a break, nothing will. So towards the end of July we headed up to the Blue Mountains to celebrate my partner’s birthday. In under 48 hours we experienced 100 km/h gusts, drizzle, sunburn and one of the most beautiful vineyards I’ve ever seen – complete with kangaroos. It was incredible.

Next month is also looking good. It’s my first proper earnings season since joining Morningstar and I’m excited to share our analysts’ thoughts with you. Hopefully, as ever, they'll provide some much needed long-term perspective amidst a sea of noise.

See you in August!

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