Category Archives: Investing

Warren Buffett’s Investing Top Four

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“Don’t look at a stock like it is a ticker symbol with a price that goes up and down on a chart. It’s a slice of a company’s profits far into the future, and that’s how they need to be evaluated.” ~ Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Warren Buffett’s philosophy is simple. Buy with a “margin of safety” undervalued companies with strong fundamentals and balance sheet, and then wait. It’s possibly the most boring way to invest in the world. But it’s effective.

For Warren Buffett, deciding what stocks to buy is “simple but not necessarily easy,” according to CNBC Warren Buffett Guide to Investing.

In his Berkshire Hathaway 1977 annual letter to shareholders, he listed four attributes he wanted to see when investing, whether he’s buying the entire company for Berkshire, or just a slice of it as a stock.

1. “One that we can understand…”

When Buffett talks about “understanding” a company, he means he understands how that company will be able to make money far into the future.

He’s often said he didn’t buy shares of what turned out to be very successful tech companies like Google and Microsoft because he didn’t understand them. At the 2000 annual meeting, a skeptical shareholder told Buffett he couldn’t imagine him not understanding something. Buffett responded, “Oh, we understand the product. We understand what it does for people. We just don’t know the economics of it 10 years from now.”

2. “With favorable long-term prospects …”

Buffett often refers to a company’s sustainable competitive advantage, something he calls a “moat.”

“Every business that we look at we think of as an economic castle… And you want the capitalistic system to work in a way that millions of people are out there with capital thinking about ways to take your castle away from you, and appropriate it for their own use. And then the question is, what kind of a moat do you have around that castle that protects it?”

— 2000 BERKSHIRE ANNUAL MEETING

A “moat” consists of things a company does to keep and gain loyal customers, such as low prices, quality products, proprietary technology, and, often, a well- known brand built through years of advertising, such as Coca-Cola. An established company in an industry that has large start-up costs that deter would be competitors can also have a moat.

3. “Operated by honest and competent people …”

“Generally, we like people who are candid. We can usually tell when somebody’s dancing around something, or where their — when the reports are essentially a little dishonest, or biased, or something.

And it’s just a lot easier to operate with people that are candid.

“And we like people who are smart, you know.

I don’t mean geniuses… And we like people who are focused on the business.” — 1995 BERKSHIRE ANNUAL MEETING

The quality of the business itself, however, takes precedence.

“The really great business is one that doesn’t require good management. I mean, that is a terrific business. And the poor business is one that can only succeed, or even survive, with great management.” — 1996 BERKSHIRE ANNUAL MEETING

4. “Available at a very attractive price.”

“The key to [Benjamin] Graham’s approach to investing is not thinking of stocks as stocks or part of a stock market. Stocks are part of a business. People in this room (Berkshire shareholders) own a piece of a business. If the business does well, they’re going to do all right as long as they don’t pay way too much to join into that business. — 1997 BERKSHIRE ANNUAL MEETING

Buffett’s goal is to buy with a “margin of safety” or when the market price is below a company’s “intrinsic value.” Buffett has said that the margin of safety is the “most important concept in investing.”

“The three most important words in investing are margin of safety…” ~ Warren Buffett

“The intrinsic value of any business, if you could foresee the future perfectly, is the present value of all cash that will be ever distributed for that business between now and judgment day.

“And we’re not perfect at estimating that, obviously.

“But that’s what an investment or a business is all about. You put money in, and you take money out.

“Aesop said, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ Now, he said that around 600 B.C. or something like that, but that hasn’t been improved on very much by the business professors now.” — 2014 BERKSHIRE ANNUAL MEETING

References:

  1. https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editorialfiles/2022/03/22/bwp22links.pdf

Focus, Discipline and Patience are Wealth Building Super Powers!

Intrinsic Value

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“Every investment is the present value of all future free cash flow.” Everything Money

Cash flow refers to the net amount of cash and cash equivalents that comes in and goes out of a company. Businesses take in money from sales as revenues and spend money on expenses. Cash received represents inflows, while money spent represents outflows.

“Intrinsic value can be defined simply as the discounted value of cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining lifetime. “ ~ Warren Buffett

A company’s ability to create value for shareholders is fundamentally determined by its ability to generate positive cash flows or, more specifically, to maximize long-term free cash flow (FCF). FCF represents the cash a company generates after accounting for cash outflows to support operations and maintain its capital assets.

Intrinsic value is defined as the discounted present value of all future cash flow of a business.

The only reason to lay out money for an investment now is to get more money later.  When you invest in a bond, its very easy to see the future cash flow and the terminal value of a bond, its printed on the certificate.

When you invest in a stock,

Investing in any financial asset involves laying out cash now in order to get cash later out of the investment.  And investing in a business, can the business deliver enough cash to you (the owner) soon enough that it makes sense to buy it as its current market value?

How much am I willing to pay for a business, considering it makes $24B in cash flow per year, and is growing at 10% annually.

Once we determine the business intrinsic value, we compare that number to the business’ current market capitalization.  Market cap is the product of the total shares outstanding and the current market stock price.

  • Market cap is higher than intrinsic value = overvalued
  • Market cap is lower than intrinsic value = undervalued

Discounted Free Cash Flow since one dollar today is worth more thant $1 in five years due to opportunity costs and lost of purchasing power of that dollar.

  • Step 1:  Find the current free cash flow – Free cash flow is the amount of money left over for the owners of the business, after factoring in cash outflows that support its operations and maintain its capital assets. The ideal FCF for valuation would equal Operating Cash Flow minu Maintenance CapEx
  • Step 2:  Grow the current free cash flow out 10 years in the future – the growth rate used will have a big impact on the final intrinsic value calculation. Check historical growth rate for cash flow and industry growth rate for cash flow.  Or, look at trend and future capital investments.
  • Step 3:  Add a terminal value – what you can sell the business for in 10 years.  Use FCF multiple.
  • Step 4:  Discount all future cash flows to present value at a rate of 12% to 15%
  • Step 5:  Add together all future cash flows to find intrinsic value
  • Step 6:  Add a margin of safety (of 20% to 30%)

In the current market environment, most companies will be trading above the intrinsic value.

References:

  1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freecashflow.asp

Warren Buffett: Morgan Housel’s Viewpoint

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“Compounding doesn’t rely on earning big returns. Merely good returns sustained uninterrupted for the longest period of time—especially in times of chaos and havoc—will always win.” ― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness

More than 2,000 books are dedicated to how Warren Buffett built his fortune. Many of them are wonderful. But few pay enough attention to the simplest fact:

Buffett’s fortune isn’t due to just being a good investor, but being a good investor since he was literally a child, writes Morgan Housel in his seminal book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness.

Warren Buffett’s estimated net worth is $110 billion as of November 2022. Of that, $109.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $107.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor.

But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century.

Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him. Consider a little thought experiment. Buffett began serious investing when he was 10 years old. By the time he was 30 he had a net worth of $1 million, or $9.3 million adjusted for inflation.16

What if he was a more normal person, spending his teens and 20s exploring the world and finding his passion, and by age 30 his net worth was, say, $25,000? And let’s say he still went on to earn the extraordinary annual investment returns he’s been able to generate (22% annually), but quit investing and retired at age 60 to play golf and spend time with his grandkids. What would a rough estimate of his net worth be today? Not $110 billion. $11.9 million. 99.9% less than his actual net worth.

Effectively all of Warren Buffett’s financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his pubescent years and the longevity he maintained in his geriatric years. If you had invested $10,000 with Warren Buffett in 1966, today you would have over $160 million! That same $10,000 invested in the S&P would be $140,000.

Buffett’s skill is investing, but his secret is time. That’s how compounding works. Think of this another way. Buffett is considered by many to be the most famous and successful investor in history. But he’s not necessarily the greatest—at least not when measured by average annual returns.

“Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people.” ~ Morgan Housel

References:

  1. Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness., Harriman House, September 8, 2020.
  2. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/65374007-the-psychology-of-money
  3. https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/richest-billionaires/warren-buffett-net-worth/

Small Cap Investing

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A focus on finding small cap companies with great fundamentals and big growth prospects.

A small-cap stock is a stock of a publicly-traded company whose market capitalization ranges from $300 million to approximately $2 billion, explains Corporate Finance Institute. The word “cap” in this term refers to a company’s market capitalization.

Savvy investors cannot afford to overlook small-cap growth companies. Although, there are several pros and cons of investing in small-cap stocks that must be considered.

Small-cap companies, in general, tend not to get the same kind of publicity as their large-cap siblings. They aren’t going to lead a segment on CNBC or the home page of the Wall Street Journal on a daily basis.

With smaller market capitalizations, small-cap companies tend to fly under the radar.

The Rise of Small-Cap Stocks

Reasons that people may invest in small-cap companies are capital appreciation — they think the stock price will go up and dividends — where the company pays you to hold it.

But some of these are solid companies and excellent small-cap stocks to buy.

Small-cap equities are more sensitive to the economy (inflation, rising interest rates and dollar strength), so a robust economic rebound would favor them.

Small-cap stocks are popular among investors because of their potential for providing better returns in the long term relative to their large-cap peers.

The advantages of investing in small-cap stocks are:

1. Growth potential – Relative to bigger companies, small-cap companies show significantly higher growth potential. For small-cap companies, it is easier to grow significantly their operational and financial base than is the case for most large-cap stocks.

Picking the right small-cap stock can turn into a profitable investment.

2. High probability of inefficiencies in the market – Information about the small-cap stocks is harder to find compared to large and mid-cap companies. Analysts typically give little attention to these companies; thus, there is a high probability of improper pricing of small-cap stocks. This situation creates vast opportunities for investors to leverage the inefficiencies in market pricing and earn a great return on their investments.

3. Financial institutions do not push prices up – Financial institutions, including mutual and hedge funds, should comply with certain regulations that do not allow them to invest heavily in small-cap stocks. For this reason, it is unlikely that the stock price will be artificially pushed up because of large investments from major financial institutions.

Nevertheless, there are some disadvantages of investing in small-cap stocks:

1. High risk – Investing in small-cap stocks involves higher risk. First, small-cap companies may have an unreliable and faulty business model which can result in company’s management not being able to adjust the business model, and can result in poor operational and financial results. And, small-cap companies usually have less access to new capital and new sources of financing. Due to this reason, it is more likely that the company will not be able to bridge gaps in its cash flows or expand the business because of the inability to undertake the necessary investments.

2. Low liquidity – Small-cap stocks are less liquid than their large counterparts. Low liquidity results in the potential unavailability of the stock at a good price to purchase or it may be difficult to sell the stocks at a favorable price. Low liquidity also adds to the overall risk of the stock.

3. Time-consuming – Investing in small-cap stocks can be a time-consuming activity. Due to the under-coverage of small-cap stocks by financial media, institutions and analysts, the amount of available research on small-cap companies is usually limited.

Moreover, small cap technology and all small cap stocks are discounted to a great degree by investors in a rising interest rate environment, purely due to the fact that they have the bulk of potential earnings and cash flow far out into the future. The higher long-term rates are, the less those future earnings and cash flow are worth. This goes for virtually all unprofitable growth tech stocks.

Essentially, small-cap stocks may provide investors with an opportunity to earn a substantial return on their investments. However, this type of investing should be approached with caution as small-cap stocks are often risky and volatile.

References:

  1. https://investorplace.com/2022/11/7-excellent-small-cap-stocks-to-buy-before-this-year-ends/
  2. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/wealth-management/small-cap-stock/
  3. https://news.yahoo.com/10-best-small-cap-stocks-140302020.html

20 Investment Lessons from the 2008 Financial Crisis

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“Attention to risk must be a 24/7/365 obsession, with people – not computers – assessing and reassessing the risk environment in real time.” ~ Seth Klarman

At an early age, Billionaire and Baupost Capital CEO Seth Klarman was fascinated with business and making money.  By the age of ten he was investing in the stock market. 

During Klarman’s time in the investing world, he’s been able to compound capital at a 20% annual return. 

In 1991 Klarman wrote his book, Margin of Safety, and there have only been 5,000 copies printed.  As a result of such a small supply and enormous demand, Klarman’s book is very expensive reselling for $1,500 to $2,500.

James Clear — who writes about habits, decision making, and is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits — summarizes the book, Margin of Safety, as follows:

“Avoiding loss should be the primary goal of every investor. The way to avoid loss is by investing with a significant margin of safety. A margin of safety is necessary because valuation is an imprecise art, the future is unpredictable, and investors are human and make mistakes.”

2010 Baupost Capital’s annual letter

Here is an excerpt from the 2010 annual letter of Baupost Capital written by Seth Klarman. He was shocked at how quickly investors have returned to the risky investing and financial behaviors that got them in trouble during the 2008 Financial Crisis;

1. Things that have never happened before are bound to occur with some regularity. You must always be prepared for the unexpected (the Black Swan) event, including sudden, sharp downward swings in markets and the economy. Whatever adverse scenario you can contemplate, reality can and will be far worse.

2. When excesses such as lax lending standards become widespread and persist for some time (e.g., ninja (no income, no job and no assets) loans), people are lulled into a false sense of security, creating an even more dangerous situation. In some cases, excesses migrate beyond regional or national borders, raising the ante for investors and governments. These excesses will eventually end, triggering a crisis at least in proportion to the degree of the excesses. Correlations between asset classes may be surprisingly high when leverage rapidly unwinds.

3. Nowhere does it say that investors should strive to make every last dollar of potential profit; consideration of risk must never take a backseat to return. Conservative positioning entering a crisis is crucial: it enables one to maintain long-term oriented, clear thinking, and to focus on new opportunities while others are distracted or even forced to sell. Portfolio hedges must be in place before a crisis hits. One cannot reliably or affordably increase or replace hedges that are rolling off during a financial crisis.

4. Risk is not inherent in an investment; it is always relative to the price paid. Uncertainty is not the same as risk. Indeed, when great uncertainty – such as in the fall of 2008 – drives securities prices to especially low levels, they often become less risky investments.

5. Do not trust financial market risk models. Reality is always too complex to be accurately modeled. Attention to risk must be a 24/7/365 obsession, with people – not computers – assessing and reassessing the risk environment in real time. Despite the predilection of some analysts to model the financial markets using sophisticated mathematics, the markets are governed by behavioral science, not physical science.

6. Do not accept principal risk while investing short-term cash: the greedy effort to earn a few extra basis points of yield inevitably leads to the incurrence of greater risk, which increases the likelihood of losses and severe illiquidity at precisely the moment when cash is needed to cover expenses, to meet commitments, or to make compelling long-term investments.

7. The latest trade of a security creates a dangerous illusion that its market price approximates its true value. This mirage is especially dangerous during periods of market exuberance. The concept of “private market value” as an anchor to the proper valuation of a business can also be greatly skewed during ebullient times and should always be considered with a healthy degree of skepticism.

8. A broad and flexible investment approach is essential during a crisis. Opportunities can be vast, ephemeral, and dispersed through various sectors and markets. Rigid silos can be an enormous disadvantage at such times.

9. You must buy on the way down. There is far more volume on the way down than on the way back up, and far less competition among buyers. It is almost always better to be too early than too late, but you must be prepared for price markdowns on what you buy.

10. Financial innovation can be highly dangerous, (think cryptocurrency) though almost no one will tell you this. New financial products are typically created for sunny days and are almost never stress-tested for stormy weather. Securitization is an area that almost perfectly fits this description; markets for securitized assets such as subprime mortgages completely collapsed in 2008 and have not fully recovered. Ironically, the government is eager to restore the securitization markets back to their pre-collapse stature.

11. Ratings agencies are highly conflicted, unimaginative dupes. They are blissfully unaware of adverse selection and moral hazard. Investors should never trust them.

12. Be sure that you are well compensated for illiquidity – especially illiquidity without control – because it can create particularly high opportunity costs.

13. At equal returns, public investments are generally superior to private investments not only because they are more liquid but also because amidst distress, public markets are more likely than private ones to offer attractive opportunities to average down.

14. Beware leverage in all its forms. Borrowers – individual, corporate, or government – should always match fund their liabilities against the duration of their assets. Borrowers must always remember that capital markets can be extremely fickle, and that it is never safe to assume a maturing loan can be rolled over. Even if you are unleveraged, the leverage employed by others can drive dramatic price and valuation swings; sudden unavailability of leverage in the economy may trigger an economic downturn.

15. Many leveraged buyouts (LBOs) are man-made disasters. When the price paid is excessive, the equity portion of an LBO is really an out-of-the-money call option. Many fiduciaries placed large amounts of the capital under their stewardship into such options in 2006 and 2007.

16. Financial stocks are particularly risky. Banking, in particular, is a highly leveraged, extremely competitive, and challenging business. A major European bank recently announced the goal of achieving a 20% return on equity (ROE) within several years. Unfortunately, ROE is highly dependent on absolute yields, yield spreads, maintaining adequate loan loss reserves, and the amount of leverage used. What is the bank’s management to do if it cannot readily get to 20%? Leverage up? Hold riskier assets? Ignore the risk of loss? In some ways, for a major financial institution even to have a ROE goal is to court disaster.

17. Having clients with a long-term orientation is crucial. Nothing else is as important to the success of an investment firm.

18. When a government official says a problem has been “contained,” pay no attention.

19. The government – the ultimate short-term-oriented player – cannot withstand much pain in the economy or the financial markets. Bailouts and rescues are likely to occur, though not with sufficient predictability for investors to comfortably take advantage. The government will take enormous risks in such interventions, especially if the expenses can be conveniently deferred to the future. Some of the price-tag is in the form of back- stops and guarantees, whose cost is almost impossible to determine.

20. Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians.

References:

  1. https://jamesclear.com/book-summaries/margin-of-safety-risk-averse-value-investing-strategies-for-the-thoughtful-investor
  2. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/seth-klarman-twenty-investment-lessons-should-have-been-learned-2008-crash-2013-04-13
  3. https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/episodes/margin-of-safety-summary/

FTX Debacle and Lessons Learned

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The lessons investors can learn from the FTX debacle are not all that new or even groundbreaking. But, the lessons are important ones for investors to learn who desire to build long-term wealth and achieve financial freedom.

The significant lessons are the importance of investors understanding an asset and doing thorough research on companies in which they intend to invest.

In FTX’s case, here is a company, led by it’s under thirty CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), that in three years grew from relative nothing to $32B literally overnight. It’s meteoric rise attracted thousands of investors who were more than happy to invest their capital in a young company and its brash CEO.

Yet, by performing just basic research on how the company made its money, on the experience and acumen of the CEO, and on the executive management team, and on the company’s financial profitability would have raised red flag to cause serious investor to pause before investing their capital in the company.

Additionally, SBF, FTX’s thirty-something CEO was consider a “wunder-kid” of sorts and featured by Forbes as its #2 “The Forbes 400” in 2022.

In a relatively short time, SBF took FTX from near zero is capitalization to $32B. His feats caused both seasoned and retail investors to flock to FTX.

Now, at the beginning of the week, FTX possessed a capitalization of $32. By Friday, FTX was at near zero capitalization, SBF had resigned, and the luster and shine of the once high flying company had been completely tarnished.

Thus, this is a classic and stark example why investors must understand and do thorough research, and remain disciplined before investing their capital.

References:

  1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2022/09/27/10-under-40-the-youngest-billionaires-on-the-2022-forbes-400/?sh=2455189c397e

Inflation Hits Disney’s Magic Kingdom…Ticket Prices Increase

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Walt Disney World is raising the range of prices for some of its single-day, single-park tickets at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios in Orlando, FL ~ Janet H. Cho

Families will have to splurge more for their Walt Disney World vacations starting December 8, 2022, because some single-day, single-park ticket prices at Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios in Orlando could cost as much as $189 a person during the nine-day peak period around Christmas and New Year’s Day.

  • Single-day ticket prices to Disney’s Magic Kingdom Park are increasing to between $124 and $189 a person. The $189 ticket price is specifically for that peak holiday season around Christmas and the new year, and not all year, the Disney spokesperson told Barron’s.
  • Single-day tickets to Disney’s Animal Kingdom are staying at the current $109 to $159 range for visitors ages 10 and up.
  • Single-day tickets to Epcot are increasing to a range of $114 to $179; and
  • Single-day tickets to Hollywood Studios are increasing to $124 to $179.
  • Instead of the current system, which lets visitors make their theme park reservations only after buying their tickets, the new single-day tickets automatically include theme park reservations. The price of the Park Hopper option that lets people visit a second park the same day for $65 more is also changing.

What’s Next: Except for renewals by current annual pass holders, Disney has paused new sales of all but its Pixie Dust annual passes, available to FL residents only, which are staying at $399 a person. It is raising the price of its other annual passes, including the Incredi-Pass, which is going up to $1,399.

Under a separate program, discounted multiday tickets for active or retired members of the U.S. military, their families and friends, are increasing by $20 to $369 plus tax a person for the five-day ticket package plus Park Hopper, or $349 plus tax a person for the four-day package.

Disney also added more blackout dates when military tickets aren’t eligible, including around Christmas and New Year’s this year, and around spring break and Thanksgiving next year.

References:

  1. https://www.barrons.com/articles/disney-visits-will-cost-more-in-florida-51668627930

Value Investing

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Value investing involves determining the intrinsic value — the true, inherent worth of an asset — and buying it at a level that represents a substantial discount to that price.

The gap between a stock’s intrinsic value and the price it is currently selling for is known as the margin of safety.

The greater the margin of safety, the more an investor’s projections can be off while still profitably gaining from an investment in the shares of the company being evaluated.

It can be helpful to ensure you understand what value investing is and is not. It is not searching for stocks with low price-to-earnings ratios and blindly buying the stocks that make that first cut. Instead, value investors employ a series of metrics and ratios to help them determine a stock’s intrinsic value and a sufficient margin of safety.

Value investing in stocks often means looking for mispriced shares in out-of-the-way places. This can include looking at companies in out-of-favor sectors, businesses in frowned-upon industries, companies that are going through some type of scandal, or stocks currently enduring a bear market. Unpopular sectors and companies are often treasure troves for the successful value investor, requiring the possession of both a long-term approach and a contrarian mindset. Regardless of where the investments come from, though, value investing is the art and science of identifying stocks priced below their actual worth.

Successful value investing exercise patience and hold during lean times. Taking just one example, in early 2015, American Express shareholders learned that AmEx lost its exclusive credit-card deal with Costco Wholesale locations. In the following months, Amex lost almost 50% of its market-cap value. Yet far from being a moment to panic, savvy investors might have seen an opportunity to buy AmEx for outsized gains. Within three years of its lowest point, American Express had almost doubled and reached new all-time highs.

Selling at lows while negative sentiment is at its highest will guarantee frustration and permanent loss of capital. It can be hard to wait while your thesis plays out, but patience is absolutely necessary for value investors who want to beat the market.

Of course, value investing is more than a waiting game. Investors must remain diligent in staying up to date on a company to ensure their thesis is proceeding as planned. This means paying attention to the company’s business performance — not its stock price.

The Big 5 Numbers 

Phil Town, founder and CEO of Rule #1 Investing, says there are “the big 5 numbers” in value investing.

The Big 5 numbers are:

  1. Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
  2. Equity (Book Value) Growth
  3. Earnings per Share (EPS) Growth 
  4. Sales (Revenue) Growth
  5. Cash Growth

All the big 5 numbers will be 10% or greater if the company, and he numbers should be stable or growing over the past 10 years. 

The big takeaway

Value investing is not easy. It requires time, focus, discipline, patience and dedication to the craft. It will often mean looking and feeling foolish while you wait for an investment thesis to play out. If this doesn’t sound like it’s for you, investing in passive index funds is a perfectly suitable alternative.

For investors who enjoy the hunt of looking for undervalued assets — and beating the market at its own game — value investing can be richly rewarding in more ways than one. By following this simple guide, investors can be well on their way to understanding how value investing can beat the market.

References:

  1. https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/how-to-be-a-successful-value-investor
  2. https://wp.ruleoneinvesting.com/blog/how-to-invest/value-investing/
  3. https://valueinvestoracademy.com/i-read-rule-1-by-phil-town-heres-what-i-learned/

Value Investing: The 4 Ms of Investing

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“The one and only secret to stockpiling is to make sure the value of the business is substantially greater than the price you are paying for it. If you get this right, you cannot help but get rich.” ~ Phil Town

Value investing is a strategy that focuses on investing in individual assets, but not just any asset, assets in wonderful companies or real estate that are priced well below their value, explains Phil Town, founder and CEO of Rule 1 Investing.

Value investing aims to reduce risk by increasing understanding of what you’re investing in order to make wiser investment decisions, and purchasing it at a price that gives you a margin of safety.

  • Value investing is a focused, disciplined and patient strategy, it’s a buy-and-hold for the long-term strategy. You need to be disciplined, patient and keep your focus on long-term profits.
  • It’s about making investing decisions based on the intrinsic value of a company, or what it’s actually worth, which is not to be confused with its sticker or market price.
  • A key component of value investing is buying stocks at the right time, and the right time will present itself if you remain focused, disciplined and patient.
  • The value investor isn’t swayed by the general public’s reaction or market fear. Fear can make people sell too early or miss an excellent opportunity to buy. But, the value investor decides when to buy or sell based on a wonderful company’s intrinsic value, not based on the prevailing fear or greed in the stock market.

Growth at a Reasonable Price (GARP)

Value investors focuses on finding companies that were both undervalued and are what you might call “wonderful companies” with a high potential for growth. Thus, it wasn’t enough for a company to just be undervalued. Instead, the best companies to invest in were ones that were both undervalued and wonderful companies.

To spot undervalued companies, it’s also important to ensure that the companies you are investing in are high-quality and can retain their value throughout the time that you are holding them. Phil Town likes to evaluate whether or not a business is a quality company with what he calls the 4 Ms of Investing: Meaning, Management, Moat, and Margin of Safety.

If you can check off each of these 4 Ms for a company you are considering investing in, it will be well worth your while.

Meaning

The company should have meaning to you. This is important because if it has meaning to you, you understand what it does and how it works and makes money, and will be more likely to do the research necessary to understand all elements of the business that affect its value.

Management

The company needs to have solid management. Perform a background check on the leaders in charge of guiding the company, paying close attention to the integrity and success of their prior decisions to determine if they are good, solid leaders that will take the company in the right direction.

Moat

The company should have a moat. A moat is something that separates them from the competition and, thus, protects them. If a company has patented technology, control over the market, an impenetrable brand, or a product or service customers would never switch from, it has a moat.

Margin of Safety

In order to guarantee good returns, you must buy a company at a price that gives you a margin of safety. For Rule #1 investors, 50% is the margin of safety to look for, explains Town. This provides a buffer that makes it possible to still experience gains even if problems arise. This is arguably the most important.

These 4Ms draw heavily from the rules of value investing. Both sets of rules dictate that you must buy a company below its actual value in order to make a profit. That’s the bottom line.

Even if a company is in a great position today, it needs to have future potential to triple or 10x your investment. The market cap is a reflection of what you would pay today to own a piece of the company. But the market price is not the true value of the company.

You, as a value investor, should rely on the “intrinsic value” to determine whether a company is a worthy value investment. Then, you can use the market cap to help you determine if the company is on sale and if it has the growth potential.

References:

  1. https://wp.ruleoneinvesting.com/blog/how-to-invest/value-investing/
  2. https://www.ruleoneinvesting.com/blog/financial-control/market-capitalization/

Phil Town is an investment advisor, hedge fund manager, and 3x NY Times Best-Selling Author. Phil’s goal is to help you learn how to invest and achieve financial independence.

Recession and Investing

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A recession is a period of economic contraction. Recessions are typically accompanied by falling stock markets, a rise in unemployment, a drop in income and consumer spending, and increased business failures. ~ SoFi

Liz Young, Head of Investment Strategy at SoFi, talks recession.

A recession describes a contraction in economic activity, often defined as a period of two consecutive quarters of decline in the nation’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the inflation-adjusted value of all goods and services produced in the United States. However, the National Bureau of Economic Research, which officially declares recessions, takes a broader view — including indicators like wholesale-retail sales, industrial production, employment, and real income.

Recessions tend to have a wide-ranging economic impact, affecting businesses, jobs, everyday individuals, and investment returns. But what are recessions exactly, and what long-term repercussions do they tend to have on personal financial situations? Here’s a deeper dive into these economic contractions.

It’s worth remembering some investments do better than others during recessions. Recessions are generally bad news for highly leveraged, cyclical, and speculative companies. These companies may not have the resources to withstand a rocky market.

By contrast, the companies that have traditionally survived and even outperformed during a downturn are companies with very little debt and strong cash flow. If those companies are in traditionally recession-resistant sectors, like essential consumer goods, utilities, defense contractors, and discount retailers, they may deserve closer consideration.

During a recession, it’s important to remember two key tenets that will help you stick to your investing strategy.

  1. The first is: While markets change, your financial goals don’t.
  2. The second is: Paper losses aren’t real until you cash out.

The first tenet refers to the fact that investors go into the market because they want to achieve certain financial goals. Those goals are often years or decades in the future. But as noted above, the typically shorter-term nature of a recession may not ultimately impact those longer-term financial plans. So, most investors want to avoid changing their financial goals and strategies on the fly just because the economy and financial markets are declining.

The second tenet is a caveat for the many investors who watch their investments — even their long-term ones — far too closely. While markets can decline and account balances can fall, those losses aren’t real until an investor sells their investments. If you wait, it’s possible you’ll see some of those paper losses regain their value.

So, investors should generally avoid panicking and making rash decisions to sell their investments in the face of down markets. Panicked and emotional selling may lead you into the trap of “buying high and selling low,” the opposite of what most investors are trying to do.

Stay the course and stick to your financial plan to survive a recession!

Source: https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/investing-during-a-recession/