I don't think he was ever some kind of investing genius ala Jim Simmons or a Peter Lynch, but I also think your point leans a bit too far into revisionist history, as does a lot of the broader sentiment here and throughout the media.
With reference to the longer term returns, a few years ago the ten year performance resulted in close to double the return of the index at the end of the period. As mentioned in the video (going off the top of my head) 85% of 3 month periods involved outperformance. Anyone that held this stock long term knows that the occasionally 6 months will go by with minor underperformance and you'll have the AFR calling for Hamish's head, but ultimately the company kept plodding along and whether anyone wants to admit it at this point, they did overcome it and they were very consistent. You outperform an index by 3-4% PA over a decade and provide lower volatility during down-cycles and whether or not those returns are sexy to you its a sustainable and strong business model, especially with the consistency of the company.
Over the last ten years endless funds have come and gone, its often a new fund every year that becomes a darling then ultimately down the track is forgotten about, simply the nature of active funds management. In the meantime Magellan was consistently outperforming even if it was only by 2-3% per year. This history can't be waived away and the reality is that there aren't an endless number of funds that generate long term outperformance net of fees. Those that do tend to excel for short periods then fall off. Magellan didn't over what is undeniably a very lengthy amount of time.
Now I agree with everything else you've said in those post and elsewhere from what I can remember, but going back a few years it *clearly* wasn't simply marketing, this company had some of the most consistent long term outperformance of any major fund global equities in Australia and on top of that were actually extremely transparent in terms of their holdings. Over the past few years since underperformance has grown more serious a lot of the regular market updates and specific details on holdings are no longer presented, various graphs comparing the companies fund to the index have been stripped from the website and in general the website requires significantly more clicks before you're looking at out/underperformance and of course its without the visual celebrations that existed in the past.
In terms of Hamish and his ego, I absolutely see this as a core issue of the company. I also completely agree that Hamish is at his best when focusing on value propositions for individual stocks, rather than for example devising percentages for Omicron without understanding that he could have simply Googled the hospital rates in South Africa to figure out its a nothingburger. There is absolutely too much focus on macro probabilities he doesn't seem to be formulating accurately outside the simple and central goal of value investing.
To go back to the overall performance of the company, I don't think the question of whether or not Hamish was ever a gifted stock picker is relevant. Regardless of if he is or not, it was only a few years ago that this was a terrific company, one of the most transparent on the ASX, very consistent, extremely high profit margins and low costs, and ultimately backed by consistency and solid long term returns. The average fund manager over the long term doesn't beat the index, let alone net of fees. The performance was above average.
The problem isn't whether or not he met the hype, the problem is he underperformed the index by 20% in the greatest bull market in recent history in a single year. Its possible to acknowledge that this company had a lot more to it than marketing and hype over the years but also that the business conduct and investment decisions over the past 18 months has been abysmal in every regard.
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