Holding through a cycle is not free. A note on the discipline required to distinguish a business that needs time from one that needs a different owner.
Patience is frequently described as an advantage and rarely described as an expense. It is both. Capital held in a business through a weak cycle is capital unavailable elsewhere, and the opportunity cost compounds quietly.
The useful distinction is between a company whose economics are intact and whose demand is delayed, and a company whose economics have changed. The first rewards time. The second consumes it.
We test the difference with a small number of durable indicators: gross margin under stress, customer or tenant retention without price concession, the ability to recruit at the operating level, and whether reinvestment still earns above the cost of capital when volumes are depressed.
Where those indicators hold, we extend. Where they do not, the correct response is not additional patience but a decision, taken early, in favour of a different owner.