About Acus Team
Welcome to the journey of a small, family-run investment practice with a memory and a horizon
Where do we come from?
Who are we?
We are we going?
When we seriously ask ourselves these questions – captured in the masterpiece by Paul Gauguin – we encounter mysteries rather than answers. The human interior is like an unexplored geography whose landscape is continually changing. Every day we see emerging regions, unknown lands, drifting continents, cities rising or crumbling.
We happened to live on the shore of Lake Geneva since 2019 – a land of majestic landscapes and exceptional individuals such as Henry Dunant – co-founder of the Red Cross – or Maurice Zundell – a mystic of interior whose notion of ‘unexplored geography’ resonates so deeply with ourselves.
While living near Geneva – in Grand-Saconnex initially and in Nyon later – we found a new form of ‘exploring’ geographies mentioned above. That is through making decisions about where to invest our savings. Our investment journey started in 2020. By 2026 we have created a small, family-run investment practice which has a memory and a horizon. We felt our style has matured enough to put our signatures on it through the website acus.team and this blog.
Stereotype thinking tends to connect investing only with numbers, money or even gambling. On the contrary, we have discovered it through the sense of belonging to a wider story of where humanity is heading. When you commit your money to a company, you are not only deciding on what return you expect to have. You are also taking a stand about what is meaningful to pursue in the first place.
That’s why we avoid fossil fuels, addictive substances or weapons – these sectors have already received their fair share of investments from others. We are looking for businesses that create lasting value for the communities and the entire world. We think durability and decency tend to travel together: companies that treat customers, employees, and ecosystems well are usually the ones still compounding a decade later.
We treat our capital with extreme care and invest only in the companies described above when the price is right. We want investment to work both ways so it can create value for those who use capital and those who provide it, including ourselves. When portfolio will become our main source of income – we will be ready to donate more than invest. There are plenty of fields where free market cannot by itself generate outcomes favorable for all, including education or healthcare.
Here, we will write about how we think of our investments, how we make our decisions and how we learn from mistakes. At the same time, an important part of the journey will be essays about things that may seem distant to investment. Such as work, people, culture, and the small things that matter most. Indeed, we agree with legendary investor Nick Sleep who said he was learning from “home-life” to become better investor and what he learned from investing also helped him be better husband and father. “Investing is a rational, metaphysical, almost spiritual journey. And that’s what a full life is all about.”
When we say “we,” we mean Evelina and Algirdas – two soulmates in marriage since 2013 sharing life and ‘unexplored geographies’, two separate trees embracing each other with branches and leaves to form one. Indeed, we believe that marriage helps each of us to reach our true potential. Couples in J.R.R. Tolkien worlds – Beren and Luthien, Eärendil and Elwing or Aragorn and Arwen – achieve great things only because they travel together even if their gifts and origins may be very different.
Algirdas here is probably more into details and numbers, he is the one actively scouting for stocks and building investment theses. While Evelina is likely more into wider picture and meaning behind it. She is quick to grasp value beyond numbers and is faster to see when things are not looking right. We read each other’s texts, enrich them and we post here under joint authorship. The investment is made when both agree on decision ticket to either buy or sell.
Our decisions need to pass risk checklists available on our website acus.team. These are meant to guide us only to companies that have moats and avoid perils such as damaging their ecosystem, reputation, or overextending. These companies would consistently generate free cash flow and if we can get it right, it can grow for a very long time, creating exponential snowball effect that accelerates wealth creation.
We use two mental models to form a winning team. One is to map stocks as if they were terrains. Plains, grasslands and forests are hosting many businesses that compete. There are no natural barriers for protection, albeit forests, especially if they are old and swampy, slow down enemies acting like brand shelter. We are thinking of Games Workshops or Hermes in that way. Hills and mountains are very hard to cross. Companies that are passes or tunnels dug in decades through technological excellence can persist against formidable enemies. These are cases of ASML or Nvidia. Rivers, fords, lakes and straits are like veins for commerce. If you control the strait, you can benefit from the economic activity itself. We are constantly looking for such marketplaces for economic coordination. Visa is one of those we own. Then there are deserts and tundras where economic activity would not happen if it was not state regulation. Few want to go there, so those who survive are usually good businesses. We are thinking of a waste company like MoBruk in that way.
The second mental model is a line-up of football positions to get diversification right. 11-18 stocks are enough to play the game if they are diverse enough. Forwards are companies rapidly creating new value - their moats are emerging and best days for free cash flow are still to come. This is Nvidia. Midfielders are stocks that are expected to run long distances in time, because their moats and reasons of being within ecosystems are well established. This is Visa. Defenders are supposed to hold the line during downturns and provide us breathing space with dividends. This is MoBruk. Goalkeeper is unorthodox position that gives us freedom to choose something outside our style but must not concede a loss!
We review stocks we own once a year, normally just after they publish their annual reports. This happens mainly between February and April, but some have theirs at the end of July and one in November. Our family portfolio is still in accumulation phase. Regular savings remain a large driver, so cumulative value on its own is not yet a fair measure of performance. We report our estimated annualized money-weighted return and compare it with two hypothetical benchmark portfolios, assuming the same contributions had been invested in widely recognized equity indexes: one global and one Swiss. Counting in CHF, our base currency, so far so good. We did not lose money but roughly matched those indexes. Our performance table can be found at acus.team. Our objective is not to maximize short-term performance, but to compound over decades and enjoy the process in the meantime. Wealth is always only a tool to live full and meaningful lives.
“The bread we buy, and sell can become the symbol of a communion, if the hands that touch it and the eyes that meet allow the light of souls to pass between them.” Maurice Zundell