A self-proclaimed “code-breaker”, Robert Mullin has made a career charting the different storylines in the “soap opera” of markets. He says he knows when the dramatic crescendos are coming and which storylines are just beginning.
But, like with the soaps, the most entertaining and outlandish times in markets can seem too-far fetched to dive in fully.
The son of a stockbroker, Mr Mullin has more than 30 years’ investing experience and is chief investment officer at Marathon Resource Advisors in San Francisco, a company he founded.
Mr Mullin operates Marathon’s sole fund, which focuses on investment in resources and natural resources equities, with the fund generating more than 30 per cent annual returns since 2020, compared to the 8 per cent generated by the S&P Global Natural Resources Index.
Mr Mullin says his “classic value investor” approach is “anachronistic” in an age when popular themes and stocks get support based on popular trends, the news of the day and “bigness”.
“To me, it’s a very logical thing about looking at companies and cash flows and their ability to generate cash flow over time,” he tells The Australian. “And then building a structure on that to figure out how much I want to pay for it.”
His propensity for sequencing and maths has helped him carve out his niche, focusing on the resources sector, he says.
“My ability to look and understand evolution and flows in numbers over time is pretty good. And that lends itself to raw materials investing, because you’re talking about the tangible ability of these companies to generate cash flows over time.
“As opposed to, you know, I’m not going to be able to tell you who the next, great AI winner is.
“I’m a classic value investor, and that’s something that requires math. And a lot of things I look at in the world of investing today, (it) seems like the math requirement has been lifted.”
Mr Mullin will be speaking as a featured stock picker at the Sohn Hearts & Minds conference at the Sydney Opera House in November, the 10th anniversary of the event. Sohn has so far raised $84m for medical research.
The event comes as markets continue to perform despite heightened geopolitical volatility and social anxiety. The continued, record-breaking support markets have found (the three major Wall St indices are up from between around 9 and 17 per cent since the start of the calendar year) has a suspicious Mr Mullin playing a lot of defence.
“We’re in a period of time of economic volatility, geopolitical turmoil, socio-economic turmoil. And that doesn’t seem to me totally consistent with US markets, the most richly valued markets in the history of markets.
“This is a period of time where you want to have elements … that are defensive, that are grounded, that are based in something where you don’t have to make sure that your company hits the next long ball and is the winner in AI.
“The AI theme is one that is so big and so difficult to really understand and grasp, that those associated with it are simply getting the benefit of the doubt that they’ll be able to turn those into economic businesses.
“I still think there’s an opportunity to be a great value guy, and we’ve done very well for our investors, having a very disciplined approach buying companies the old-fashioned way.”
The stunning and continued rise of gold is one of those storylines Mr Mullin believes is still “in its middle innings”.
The price of gold has surged almost 50 per cent so far this calendar year to around $US3878.90 per ounce. In Australia, stocks in gold miners have followed suit, with Northern Star (58 per cent higher), Newmont (116.1 per cent) and Evolution (128.9 per cent) outperforming their resource sector peers so far in calendar 2025.
“People make the gold market too complicated,” Mr Mullin says. “They say it’s an inflation play or a deflation play, or it’s a play on negative real interest rates (or) a depreciation of the dollar. Too complicated.
“What gold has shown us over the past decade is it’s just a really good, diversifying, anti-correlated asset in a period of time where people hold a lot of US dollar, and dollar denominated assets, worldwide.”
And Mr Mullin believes gold still has a lot of value for investors.
“The remarkable thing is … in the third quarter of 2024, gold was 2400, 2500 bucks, and these (gold) stocks were trading at two or three times cash flow. Now the stocks are all up 100 per cent, but gold is at 3700 bucks, and they’re all still trading at two times cash flow.
“So the world is slowly coming around … but they’re not expensive by any stretch of the imagination.
“Gold stocks are (now) actually cheaper than they were last year.”
And while he can’t disclose which stock he will be picking at Sohn, Mr Mullin says his presentation will focus on the “old economy/new economy dance” in the resources sector.
“What I think most people don’t understand is that (resources stocks) are mostly old economy businesses, but there are some very ‘new economy’ applications of current tech that I think are very fascinating.”
The Sohn Hearts & Minds conference will be held at the Sydney Opera House on Friday, November 14, 2025. Tickets can be purchased at sohnheartsandminds.com.au.
This article was originally posted by The Australian here.
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