Davis New York Venture Fund

Christopher Davis

Part of Davis Advisors

These are Davis New York Venture Fund's own holdings, not the firm's. Percentages are of the stock positions in its latest filing — the fund's cash and bonds are not included. Large, durable businesses at prices that leave room for growth are the whole job of the Davis New York Venture Fund, a value-oriented fund built for long-term capital appreciation rather than income. It opened on February 17, 1969, as the New York Venture Fund, the vehicle Shelby M.C. Davis set up to bring his family's approach to outside clients. The holdings are concentrated in a small handful of names, kept for years rather than traded, with a long-standing tilt toward financial services, the family's original specialty. Christopher Davis, the third generation of his family to manage money, has run the fund since 1995, when he took over from his father; he joined the firm in 1989 as an analyst and trained earlier at St. Andrews and in financial research. The discipline he inherited is unchanged: find a well-run business, buy it at a fair value, and let it compound for decades. The family calls the engine of that compounding the "Davis Double Play" — first as a company's earnings grow, then as the market pays more for each dollar of those earnings.