As you may know, recently I have been making myself familiar with Bill Ackmans more recent investment philosophies. One of the things he said recently was quite interesting, he said he has started thinking of his long term high quality investments like so: “I feel good about the long term prospects of this business, what is the probability I permanently lose 25% of my capital. Not marked to market fluctuations, permanent loss. If the answer is very small, I buy”
Quite an interesting exercise to do on one’s investment portfolio I think. Not a new way of thinking but an interesting one.
In terms of innovation, I’m not sure there’s much that can be added to the large bountiful landscape Wareen Buffett has laid out before us. In the age of ZIRP, there have been many investment innovations but much like the dotcom era, they will fade away in my opinion.
This was a fantastic read
Thanks Peter
As you may know, recently I have been making myself familiar with Bill Ackmans more recent investment philosophies. One of the things he said recently was quite interesting, he said he has started thinking of his long term high quality investments like so: “I feel good about the long term prospects of this business, what is the probability I permanently lose 25% of my capital. Not marked to market fluctuations, permanent loss. If the answer is very small, I buy”
Quite an interesting exercise to do on one’s investment portfolio I think. Not a new way of thinking but an interesting one.
In terms of innovation, I’m not sure there’s much that can be added to the large bountiful landscape Wareen Buffett has laid out before us. In the age of ZIRP, there have been many investment innovations but much like the dotcom era, they will fade away in my opinion.
“You’ll find things in an investing lifetime where it would be a mistake to have a 20% position when it should have been 100%”
Haha absolutely! Charlie and his friendly banker made sure he never made such a mistake. Perhaps Alibaba was the inverse of that though
Great piece.
At the end of the day all we are doing is assigning a probable value to discounted future cash flows.
We are as likely to discover a new paradigm to investing as we are to gravity.
Appreciate your comments.
I couldn't agree more.
We know, and follow closely, one “old and bold” investor—Murray Stahl of Horizon Kinetics.