When i first started in the stock market i focused on purely buying securities which were trading at low P/E, P/B, P/CF and so on, and if lucky, buying at a discount to book value (That's what i got for trying to enter the stock market at 20 with zero experience and I'm sure this will continue for a while. I do believe I'm continually learning even though this was only 6 months ago since i started.) However, the issue i have with this approach is that if a security is trading at a discount to book value, the business may actually have good reason to be doing so. When Warren Buffet returned home after working with his mentor Ben Graham, he reflected and discovered some interesting things about Grahams approach. Buffett, with the assistance of his partner, Charlie Munger, discovered that it's great to buy businesses that are cheap, but it's much better to buy good businesses selling for a miniscule price compared to underlying worth. Businesses with low P/Es and high returns on capital are ideal. When a company has proved itself, and it becomes available for a good price, it's important to assess the future of the business.You must analyse the company as if you owned it. You need to understand the future prospects because that's what will matter. Therefore, obtaining a formidable understanding of where the business will be in about 5+ years is crucial. The results you obtain from forecasts are only as good as the numbers you put in as one of my lecturers always said. Therefore, you need to study and be obsessed with the business in order to generate more reliable forecast figures (if this is your approach.) If it's prospects are bleak or cannot be determined with a sufficient degree of certainty, it's probably not a business worth owning. There are no called strikes in this game, you can let as many pitches go by you and it wont matter.
Therefore, it's of paramount importance venturing forward to seek
outstanding businesses with superior economics selling cheaply. That's
the revised game plan. While I've had these sort of ideas since early
on, it's becoming more apparent what needs to be sought out and what
needs to be discarded. I'm weeding the garden one step at a time.
My intention isn't to discount Ben Graham, but rather to claim his strategy rarely works anymore. How could you discount a man who put a logical consideration on a mess prior to the 1920s which the
finance community was engulfed in. Prior to his scientific approach to
the market, it was encapsulated by excessive speculation and disorderly conduct.
It's also a shame that Ben Graham didn't get any credit for being one of
the first if not the first hedge fund managers . He was actually
engaging in long/short positions in the 1920s well before the middle of the 20th century which
is when it has been credited to be born.
The value investing ideology is an interesting one because from what I've heard and also from what I've tried to explain to some of my friends is that the notions followed under the discipline either immediately resonate with you or they don't. Seth Klarman even goes onto saying that this type of investing is genetic. While i personally wouldn't take it to such extremities, i do believe that it clicks on the spot or it doesn't. For me, when i read about the ideas, it just made so much sense to me. Luckily enough, the process works. All you need to do to justify this is to take a look at some value investors long-term track records if in doubt. (As a side note, I'd like to mention that this isn't the only form of investing. It's far from it, most people don't follow this discipline at all. So please, don't just listen to this and think it's the be all and end all. There are plenty of other successful investors who follow different perspectives. It's more a matter of finding one that works for you assuming it works in the first place.)
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