Reblog: Jim O’Shaughnessy: 25 Timeless Lessons From 30 Years Of Value Investing


One of our favourite value investors here at The Acquirer’s Multiple is Jim O’Shaughnessy.

O’Shaughnessy recently wrote an awesome series of tweets detailing twenty five investment lessons that he’s learned over thirty years of value investing. They’re a must read for all investors.

With Jim’s permission here are his twenty five timeless investing lessons:

  1. I have been a professional investor for over 30 years. What follows is some things I think I know and some things I know I don’t know. Let’s start with some things I know I don’t know.
  2. I don’t know how the market will perform this year. I don’t know how the market will perform next year. I don’t know if stocks will be higher or lower in five years. Indeed, even though the probabilities favor a positive outcome, I don’t know if stocks will be higher in 10 yrs.
  3. I DO know that, according to Forbes, “since 1945…there have been 77 market drops between 5% and 10%…and 27 corrections between 10% and 20%”. I know that market corrections are a feature, not a bug, required to get good long-term performance.
  4. I do know that during these corrections, there will be a host of “experts” on business TV, blogs, magazines, podcasts and radio warning investors that THIS is the big one. That stocks are heading dramatically lower, and that they should get out now, while they still can. Continue Reading →

stockarchitect January 16, 2019

acquirersmultiple.com / Investing / Jim O’Shaughnessy / The Acquirer’s Multiple /

Reblog: Seth Klarman: Mainstream Investing Has It Backwards


Some years ago Seth Klarman gave a fantastic speech at the MIT Sloan Investment Management Club. During his speech Klarman suggested that the mainstream approach to investing has is backwards saying:

“Right at the core, the mainstream has it backwards. Warren Buffett often quips that the first rule of investing is to not lose money, and the second rule is to not forget the first rule. Yet few investors approach the world with such a strict standard of risk avoidance. For 25 years, my firm has strived to not lose money—successfully for 24 of those 25 years—and, by investing cautiously and not losing, ample returns have been generated. Had we strived to generate high returns, I am certain that we would have allowed excessive risk into the portfolio—and with risk comes losses.”

He went on to discuss how you can successfully exploit opportunities by remaining calm, cautious and focused in the manic world of investing. Here is an excerpt from that speech:

As the father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, advised in 1934, smart investors look to the market not as a guide for what to do but as a creator of opportunity. The excessive exuberance and panic of others generate mispricings that can be exploited by those who are able to keep their wits about them.

Continue Reading →

stockarchitect November 26, 2018

Benjamin Graham / Johnny Hopkins / Seth Klarman / The Acquirer’s Multiple / Value Investing /

Reblog: Seth Klarman: Investing Requires A Degree Of Arrogance Tempered With The Humility Of Knowing We Could Be Wrong


Several years ago Jason Zweig did a great interview with Seth Klarman titled – Opportunities for Patient Investors, which was published by the CFA Institute. While the entire interview provides a number of value investing insights, one answer, in particular, provides a unique insight into Klarman’s psychology towards investing saying:

“In investing, whenever you act, you are effectively saying, I know more than the market. I am going to buy when everybody else is selling. I am going to sell when everybody else is buying. That is arrogant, and we always need to temper it with the humility of knowing we could be wrong—that things can change—and acknowledging that we have a lot of smart competitors.”

Here is an excerpt from that interview:

Zweig: In a Forbes article in the summer of 1932, Benjamin Graham wrote, “Those with enterprise haven’t the money, and those with money haven’t the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap.” Could you talk a little bit about courage? You make it sound easy. You have great clients and great partners. Was it easy to step up and buy in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009?

Klarman: You may be sceptical of my answer, but, yes, it was easy. It is critical for an investor to understand that securities aren’t what most people think they are. They aren’t pieces of paper that trade, blips on a screen up and down, ticker tapes that you follow on CNBC.

Continue Reading →

stockarchitect October 31, 2018

acquirersmultiple.com / Investing strategy / Jason Zweig / Seth Klarman / The Acquirer’s Multiple /

Reblog: Morningstar: Value Investing: Patience Will Be Rewarded


Here’s a great article from Morningstar which discusses the importance of patience as a value investor. One of the key takeaways is:

“However, by anchoring investment decisions to value, we can navigate challenging circumstances and look through market noise and emotion to identify and take advantage of opportunities that may present in times of market stress. This often sees our views as contrarian to others in the market.”

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

It is difficult to know how long it will take for an attractively priced asset to appreciate towards its fair value, long-term investors must be prepared to wait.

Value investing has a prominent place in our investment process and is backed up by a vast body of empirical evidence that supports this approach to investing.

Perhaps it can be best described through illustration in the diagram below:

Continue Reading →

stockarchitect August 13, 2018

acquirersmultiple.com / Investment / Johnny Hopkins / Morningstar / Returns / The Acquirer’s Multiple /

Reblog : Warren Buffett – “It’s Not What You Look At That Matters; It’s What You See.”


Warren Buffett provides a great lesson for all investors in the book – The Warren Buffet Way, by Robert Hagstrom. The lesson is that investors can spend weeks and years reading and analyzing information on prospective companies, but according to Buffett, “It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.” The lesson learned by Buffett happened during his investigation of IBM back in 2011.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Buffett confessed that he came late to the IBM party. Like Coca-Cola in 1988 and Burlington Northern Santa-Fe in 2006, he had been reading the annual reports for 50 years before his epiphany. It arrived, he said, one Saturday in March 2011. Quoting Thoreau, Buffett says, “It’s not what you look at that matters; it ’s what you see.” Buffett admitted to CNBC that he had been “hit between the eyes” by the competitive advantages IBM possesses in finding and keeping clients.

The information technology (IT) services industry is a dynamic and global industry within the technology sector, and no one is bigger in this industry than IBM. Information technology is an $800 billion-plus market that covers a broad spectrum of services broken down into four different buckets: consulting, systems integration, IT outsourcing, and business process outsourcing.

The first two, combined, contribute 52 percent of IBM ’s revenues; 32 percent comes from IT outsourcing; and 16 percent from business process outsourcing. In the consulting and systems integration space, IBM is the number-one global provider—38 percent bigger than the next competitor, Accenture. In the IT outsourcing space, IBM is also the number-one global provider—78 percent larger than the next competitor, Hewlett-Packard. In business process outsourcing, IBM is the seventh-largest provider, behind Teleperformance, Atento, Convergys, Sitel, Aegis, and Genpact.

Continue Reading →

stockarchitect July 30, 2018

Berkshire Hathaway / Genpact / IBM / Johnny Hopkins / The Acquirer’s Multiple / Warren Buffet /

Reblog: Bruce Berkowitz – Our Successful Three Step Approach To Value Investing


One of our favorite investors here at The Acquirer’s Multiple is Bruce Berkowitz. He is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Fairholme Capital Management, and President and a Director of Fairholme Funds. In 2010 Berkowitz was named as the 2009 Domestic-Stock Fund Manager of the Year by Morningstar as well as the Domestic-Stock Fund Manager of the Decade (2000-2009), also by Morningstar. Most recently, he was named 2013’s Money Manager of the Year by Institutional Investor Magazine.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Berkowitz in which he succinctly lays out his three-step approach to value investing, including the example of Bank of America:

At Fairholme, we’re very focused on price. Price matters most to us. And we think that price determines much of the success you’re gonna have in the future. So rather than predict what’s going to happen with the company we try to price it correctly with a large margin of safety. So pricing with a significant margin of safety is very important in our rule number one of not losing.

Once we determine what a cheap price is, our next step is to look at the investment and the underlying company and stress test it to determine all the ways that business can go wrong, the environment can go wrong, the balance sheet can go wrong. Try to kill the company.

If we can’t kill the company and we’re buying it at a price that reflects near death we may be onto something very good.

Continue Reading →

stockarchitect June 27, 2018

acquirersmultiple.com / Bruce Berkowitz / Investing strategy / Johnny Hopkins / The Acquirer’s Multiple /