Money and Finance
- A Few Comments On The Berkshire Hathaway Letter To Shareholders
We got a nice treat this year with the “Golden Anniversary” letters included in the Berkshire report. While much of what was written had been mentioned by Buffett and Munger before, there were also new things, as well as some things that especially...
- Boyles Asset Management - Q2 2013 Letter Excerpt
Below are a couple of sections (slightly edited for public viewing) from a letter just sent to the investors of the fund I help manage. Disclosure: I am a portfolio manager at Boyles Asset Management, LLC("Boyles") and the fund managed by Boyles owns...
- Harvard Business School Interview With Seth Klarman
When you started with Baupost at age 25, did you already consider yourself a value investor? Yes. After my junior year in college and right after graduating, I worked for Mutual Shares Corporation, which was run by a wonderful gentleman named Max Heine....
- 5 Keys To Reinvesting Dividends
Once you've decided to build a dividend-based portfolio, it's essential to know what you're going to do with the income generated by your investments. There are three basic options -- spend the dividend, save it, or reinvest it. Sounds...
- Neil Woodford Bbc Interview
Neil Woodford does not get covered all that much in the US, but there is a lot to like about his approach. Todd Wenning's excellent Income Investor Manifesto post really gets at the heart of the subtle yet crucial difference in the Income investor...
Money and Finance
Markel's Investment Philosophy - from 2006 Annual Report
To review the catechism of our four part equity investment philosophy, we seek to invest: 1) in common equity of profitable businesses with good returns on capital, 2) with honest and talented management teams, 3) with reinvestment opportunities and capital discipline, 4) at fair prices. The north star provided by this time-tested discipline creates a guide to constant learning and improvement.
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It is important to engrain this discipline in good years because we will need to remember it and stick to it during bad years. At some time in the future, we will have less than wonderful news to report from a single year’s worth of investing activities. All good investors suffer years of underperformance. In those times, it is easy to lose your moorings and drift into different styles and methods of investing since whatever discipline or approach you were using didn’t work out so well over the most recent twelve-month period.
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If your basic discipline is sound, drifting away from it is a big mistake. This mistake is common among both amateur and professional investors. Most people simply cannot take the psychological pain of underperforming for very long. The inherent uncertainty in investing and thinking about the unknowable future, causes people to embrace the practices of what others are doing currently. Human nature seeks comfort in crowds rather than the relative isolation of remaining independent in thoughts and actions.
If your basic discipline is sound, drifting away from it is a big mistake. This mistake is common among both amateur and professional investors. Most people simply cannot take the psychological pain of underperforming for very long. The inherent uncertainty in investing and thinking about the unknowable future, causes people to embrace the practices of what others are doing currently. Human nature seeks comfort in crowds rather than the relative isolation of remaining independent in thoughts and actions.
- A Few Comments On The Berkshire Hathaway Letter To Shareholders
We got a nice treat this year with the “Golden Anniversary” letters included in the Berkshire report. While much of what was written had been mentioned by Buffett and Munger before, there were also new things, as well as some things that especially...
- Boyles Asset Management - Q2 2013 Letter Excerpt
Below are a couple of sections (slightly edited for public viewing) from a letter just sent to the investors of the fund I help manage. Disclosure: I am a portfolio manager at Boyles Asset Management, LLC("Boyles") and the fund managed by Boyles owns...
- Harvard Business School Interview With Seth Klarman
When you started with Baupost at age 25, did you already consider yourself a value investor? Yes. After my junior year in college and right after graduating, I worked for Mutual Shares Corporation, which was run by a wonderful gentleman named Max Heine....
- 5 Keys To Reinvesting Dividends
Once you've decided to build a dividend-based portfolio, it's essential to know what you're going to do with the income generated by your investments. There are three basic options -- spend the dividend, save it, or reinvest it. Sounds...
- Neil Woodford Bbc Interview
Neil Woodford does not get covered all that much in the US, but there is a lot to like about his approach. Todd Wenning's excellent Income Investor Manifesto post really gets at the heart of the subtle yet crucial difference in the Income investor...