1. Don’t overstress diversification Investors have been so oversold on diversification that fear of having too many eggs in one basket has caused them to put far too little into companies they thoroughly know and far too much in others about which they know nothing at all. “It never seems to occur to them, and
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher lists five don’ts for investors 1. Don’t buy into promotional companies All too often, young promotional companies are dominated by one or two individuals who have great talent for certain phases of business procedure but are lacking in other equally essential talents. They may be superb salesmen
For a man like Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett who doesn’t personally own an iPhone, one wonders why he more than doubled Berkshire Hathaway’s holdings in Apple to about 2.5 per cent in January 2017. At that point, Mr Buffett owned US$17 billion worth of the tech giant’s stock In a CNBC report on 27
In Chapter 5 (The Defensive Investor and Common Stocks) of The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, touched on various aspects of defensive investment, among which was dollar-cost averaging, an application of a “formula investment”. Elaborating, he said: “The New York Stock Exchange has put considerable effort into popularizing its ‘monthly purchase
Berkshire Hathaway’s four long-standing criteria in selecting a new board director: owner-oriented, business-savvy, interested and truly independent. Chairman Warren Buffett said: “I say “truly” because many directors who are now deemed independent by various authorities and observers are far from that, relying heavily as they do on directors’ fees to maintain their standard of living.
“Woody Allen once explained that the advantage of being bi-sexual is that it doubles your chance of finding a date on Saturday night,” Warren Buffett said in his FY2015 letter to Berkshire Hathaway. Why did the Berkshire Hathaway chairman say this? “In like manner – well, not exactly like manner – our appetite for either
It takes many great stock picks to make up for just a few big errors, says Pat Dorsey, author of The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing. So even before one goes into any analysis process, care should be taken to avoid seven easily avoidable mistakes. Here is Pat Dorsey’s list of seven mistakes to
Warren Buffett’s FY2016’s letter dated February 25, 2017, to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders showed the group had 61,242,652 Apple Inc shares, a stake of 1.1 per cent costing US$6.747 billion and worth a market value of US$7.093 billion. This has since doubled. According to a CNBC report on Feb 27, 2017, the stake had doubled in
“Excellent business results by corporations will translate over the long term into correspondingly excellent market value and dividend results for owners, minority as well as majority,” Warren Buffett once said. How true this is even today although Mr Buffett said this as far back as 1978 in a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders for FY1977.
When companies say they achieve record earnings, be wary how they define “record” earnings. Warren Buffett said in a March 14, 1978, shareholder letter: “Most companies define ‘record’ earnings as a new high in earnings per share. Since businesses customarily add from year to year to their equity base, we find nothing particularly noteworthy in
In investment, having a margin of safety itself is not sufficient. Why is this so? Benjamin Graham, the founder of value investing, uses the simple basis of the insurance-underwriting business to explain the need for diversification. He said that diversification is the companion of margin of safety. In other words, margin of safety and diversification
Benjamin Graham (May 8, 1894 – September 21, 1976), the father of value investing, in his book, The Intelligent Investor, summed up the secret of sound investment in three words: margin of safety. Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham’s most famous disciple, explained his mentor’s margin of safety concept this way (Source: The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville by
The Intelligent Investor Chapter 14 – Stock Selection for the Defensive Investor 1. Adequate Size of the Enterprise The idea is to exclude small companies which may be subject to more than average vicissitudes especially in the industrial field. Not less than US$100 million of annual sales for an industrial company and, not less than
In Chapter 1 of The Intelligent Investor, author Benjamin Graham (May 8, 1894 – September 21, 1976), the father of value investing, made a clear distinction between the term “investor” and “speculator“. Benjamin Graham, as far back as 1934, said in Security Analysis (a book he co-authored): “An investment operation is one which, upon thorough
“For it is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs — a pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, who passed the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929, and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled
In his letter dated February 27, 2015 (for FY2014) to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffett says: “Rather than listen to their (advisors’) siren songs, investors – large and small – should instead read Jack Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. “Stock prices will always be far more volatile than cash-equivalent holdings. Over the long
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