Disruption: The Companies To Avoid

Disruption is rapidly becoming one of the most watched themes among investors as corporate giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter shake up traditional markets with their size, global reach and seemingly unlimited financial firepower.

Earlier this week I reported on an interview with Aswath Damodaran, first published in Goldman Sachs’ Fortnightly Thoughts magazine, in which Damodaran warned that the only way to avoid financial loss from disruption is to diversify across sectors and corporate lifecycles to capture both the mature and disrupting companies in every industry.

“Diversification shouldn’t just be across sectors, it should also be across corporate life cycles. So, if you’re buying mature stocks with price to earnings ratios less than 10x, because they look cheap...