James Anderson: “Tesla’s rise is a symbol of a revolution in energy”

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust managers James Anderson and Tom Slater prioritize long-term exponential growth by identifying companies that leverage Moore’s Law to disrupt traditional industries. Rather than relying on narrow sectoral metrics, they focus on technological enablement in fields like healthcare, energy, and logistics, viewing Tesla as a symbol of a broader energy revolution and Illumina as a leader in data-driven medicine. Their investment strategy embraces uncertainty, favoring "growth at an unreasonable price" to capture the extreme, concentrated returns that define long-term equity performance. By expanding into private markets, they secure early access to transformative businesses, building deep, trust-based relationships with founders. This approach allows them to navigate global economic shifts, particularly the re-ascendance of China, while maintaining a disciplined, long-horizon perspective that ignores short-term market volatility and conventional valuation constraints.