Friday 4 May 2012

Buffettology

http://alumni.cs.ucsb.edu/~raimisl/Buffettology.pdf


Investing from business perspective (p.21)
•The most important observation and definitely true Buffett!
•Decide what to buy first, then wait for the price (p.67)
• Caveat: may wait forever and when price drops, the company may not be
the same…


Great business vs. mediocre business
• Consumer monopoly vs. commodity (p.87)
• NOT SO SIMPLE!
• Brand competition – war (PEP-KO, MA-V-AXP-Discover)
• Brand downturn (MCD, MOT)
• Cheaper generics (soda vs. KO, batteries vs. Energizer)
• Monopolies die - newspapers!, tax preparation (HRB)
• Diworsification (HRB)
• Hit the growth wall (HOG, BRK (p.219), pharmas, MOST old monopolies!!!)
• Commodities prosper – if there is shortage – PEAK OIL?!
• Low cost producers (WMT…)
• What is “consumer monopoly”? GM was a brand, not commodity…

Excellent business checklist (p.99)
•“Earnings strong and showing upward trend” – beware of bubbles!
•Retained earnings
• It’s good to retain earnings, but they need to be reinvested at high ROI (p.
107-110) – need to track this
•Where to find those great businesses (p. 119)
• Generic blah blah

Highly predictable earnings (p.23)
•Invest only in companies with highly predictable earnings stream
•Those are the companies with a moat…
•Then you can predict rate of return…
•… and so can any other analyst /
•… so they will sell at very expensive multiplies
•… most of the time
•… but not in crashes, recessions, scandals, etc. ☺ - market
crashes are Buffettologist’s friend

The secret of compounding (p.70-73)
•Taxes kill compounding (not an issue in tax deferred accounts!
More power to trade there).
•Reinvestment (lack of) opportunities kill compounding
•Single compounding investment leads to outperformance

Investment Measures
•Initial rate of return (p. 199) = owner’s yield
•Per share 5-10 y growth rate (p.201)
•Share buybacks (p.238-239) – double edged sword, beware of
expensive share buybacks
•How company uses FCF? (p.248) – great point, but tough to
determine.

Bond investing (p. 182)

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