Patience, Independent Thinking, and the Art of Buying What Nobody Wants

Patience and independent thinking are easy to admire and much harder to practice. That is especially true when a stock is controversial, sentiment is poor, and the easiest decision is to do nothing. That was the lesson that kept surfacing when I interviewed John Rogers at the New York Value Conference, and nowhere was it more clearly illustrated than in his discussion of Sphere Entertainment.

At Boyar, that way of thinking has always been part of who we are. My father, Mark Boyar, built this firm on the idea that some of the best opportunities emerge when investors are either unwilling to do the work or too uncomfortable to act. Barron’s once called him the world’s most patient investor, and that mindset shaped how I learned to think about markets long before I had my first client. Focus on intrinsic value, think independently, and be willing to hold conviction when the crowd is moving the other way.

That is one reason John Rogers’ approach has long appealed to me. Over 43 years at Ariel Investments, under the intellectual influence of Sir John Templeton, he has built a career around buying at what Templeton famously called the point of maximum pessimism. He does not merely quote that idea. He has lived it.

Lessons from 1987

The story that best captures Rogers’ philosophy did not come from a spreadsheet. It came from a wedding planner’s office in October 1987, when the stock market fell 22% in a single day. Ariel was four years old. Its mutual fund had been open barely a year.

“This is what John Templeton says — you want to buy at maximum pessimism,” Rogers told me. “And of course, as Warren always says, you want to be greedy when others are fearful. So we have to live our values in the middle of that crash.”

What Rogers and his team actually did that day is what makes the story so memorable. They picked up the phone and started calling clients — not to calm them down, but to urge them to buy. “We literally started calling clients and telling them this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy bargains. And we were there snapping up the bargains.”

All of this while stepping in and out of a wedding planner’s office, leaving his fiancée to handle things there while he bought stocks. He wasn’t talking about conviction. He was acting on it.

Ariel finished 1988 as one of the top ten performers in the country and was named co-mutual fund manager of the year. As Rogers put it, “It really did help us build our brand where people saw we lived our values under enormous stress.”

It is a story Rogers has carried with him ever since — and you can hear it in how he talks about Sphere Entertainment.

The Maximum Pessimism Moment

When Sphere Entertainment was spun off as a standalone public company in April 2023, shares closed at $25.61 on their first day of trading, giving the company a market cap of approximately $889 million. Jim Dolan had spent $2.3 billion building a giant ball in the Nevada desert, roughly twice the original budget. The concept was unproven, the structure complicated, and Dolan himself gave many institutions an easy reason to look elsewhere.

Ariel saw something very different. According to public filings, by the end of April 2023, Ariel owned approximately 6.6 million shares — nearly 24% of the company’s outstanding stock. When I asked John how he developed the conviction to make it such a large position while so many others were skeptical, his answer was revealing. “We got out on the road. We went to visit the construction site, did the hard hat tours, went to the studio in Los Angeles and saw the kind of visuals that were going to be possible. And just ultimately fell in love with the story. It just seemed so unique and special.”

That answer resonated because it reflects something we believe strongly at Boyar: when an opportunity is controversial or misunderstood, the edge often comes from doing independent, fundamental work and reaching your own conclusion. Ariel was not reacting to headlines. It did the work and came away with a very different view.

We did too. Around the time of the spinoff, Boyar Research initiated coverage of SPHR with an intrinsic value well above where the shares traded. The core insight was straightforward: after backing out the value of the company’s other assets, investors were effectively paying only a fraction of construction cost for the Sphere itself — exactly the kind of disconnect that can emerge when an asset is complicated, controversial, and temporarily out of favor.

From Skepticism to Sold Out

What looked highly uncertain in 2023 has since been settled. U2 opened with 40 sold-out shows, the Eagles expanded their residency from 20 shows to over 50 due to overwhelming demand, and a UFC event became the highest-grossing in the venue’s history with top seats fetching over $17,000. James Dolan has said publicly that Sphere is struggling to accommodate all the artists who want to perform there.

The proprietary content story has been equally strong. The Wizard of Oz, which opened in August 2025, has sold over 2.2 million tickets generating nearly $290 million in ticket revenue — Rogers called it “much more successful than anyone ever could have dreamed.”

He also pointed to something that deserves more attention: Sphere owns its intellectual property. “Their newest general counsel is an IP lawyer,” he noted. If Sphere can create exclusive experiences across a growing network of venues, this stops being a story about one building in Las Vegas and starts being something much bigger.

The Expansion Opportunity

Rogers sees the real prize as something bigger than any single venue. “Instead of having the 18,000-seat venue, you could have a 6,000 seat, or 3,000 seat — that means many, many more cities will be willing to do this around the world.”

Abu Dhabi is already underway on an asset-light basis, with the local partner funding construction while Sphere collects franchise and licensing fees. National Harbor in Maryland has also been announced. The vision is not a building — it is a platform, and that distinction changes everything about how you value the business.

The Sell Discipline

One of the more instructive parts of our conversation came when I asked Rogers how Ariel handles position sizing as a stock runs. His exit framework was simple and precise: “We like to buy companies at 40% discounts to private market value and sell them when they’re no longer selling at a discount.”

That will sound familiar to anyone who follows our work. At Boyar, we also view public equities through a private-market lens — not looking for statistically cheap stocks, but for situations where the gap between price and underlying value is real, where assets are misunderstood, and where there is a credible path for that gap to close.

The public record shows Ariel practicing exactly what Rogers preaches. From nearly 24% ownership in April 2023, they have trimmed steadily to approximately 11% as of March 2026 — selling into strength as the discount narrowed. Meanwhile the shares have gone from $25.61 at the spinoff to around $110 today, up approximately 247% over the past year. That is not a loss of conviction. It is discipline — the same discipline Rogers showed stepping out of a wedding planner’s office in 1987 to buy stocks while everyone else was frozen.

Templeton’s counsel was to buy at maximum pessimism. Rogers did exactly that with Sphere in the spring of 2023, and the stock has risen more than 4x since. But the more important takeaway is what good investing looks like in real time: doing original work when others are walking away, holding conviction when the market offers little reassurance, and maintaining discipline on the way out as well as on the way in. It is why, when Rogers talks about patience and independent thinking, it sounds less like investment advice and more like something I heard growing up.

Jonathan Boyar

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Important Disclosures. The information herein is provided by Boyar’s Intrinsic Value Research LLC (“Boyar Research”) and: (a) is for general, informational purposes only; (b) is not tailored to the specific investment needs of any specific person or entity; and (c) should not be construed as investment advice. Boyar Research does not offer investment advisory services and is not an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) or any other regulatory body. Any opinions expressed herein represent current opinions of Boyar Research only, and no representation is made with respect to the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of the information herein. Boyar Research assumes no obligation to update or revise such information. In addition, certain information herein has been provided by and/or is based on third party sources, and, although Boyar Research believes this information to be reliable, Boyar Research has not independently verified such information and is not responsible for third-party errors. You should not assume that any investment discussed herein will be profitable or that any investment decisions in the future will be profitable. Investing in securities involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Important Information: Past performance does not guarantee future results. The company mentioned in this sample are for informational purposes only and the performance of the stock selected is not indicative of the performance of the stocks profiled in Boyar Research, the performance of the stocks selected, and the performance of Boyar Research may in fact diverge materially. Additional information regarding the performance of other companies in Boyar Research is available upon request.

This information is not a recommendation, or an offer to sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy, an interest in any security, including an interest in any investment vehicle managed or advised by affiliates of Boyar Research. Any information that may be considered advice concerning a federal tax issue is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, for the purposes of (i) avoiding penalties imposed under the United States Internal Revenue Code or (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction or matter discussed herein. Clients of an affiliate of Boyar Research and employees of Boyar Research own shares in SPHR. Ariel Investments is a research client of Boyar Research.