In contrast to this cautious view about near term return from operations, we are optimistic about prospects for long term return from major equity investments held by our insurance companies. We make no attempt to…
In contrast to this cautious view about near term return from operations, we are optimistic about prospects for long term return from major equity investments held by our insurance companies. We make no attempt to…
Adam Smith：The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI, Paragraph 594
Adam Smith《The Wealth of Nations》· Book I, Chapter XI · Investing
The market for butcher’s meat is almost everywhere confined to the country which produces it. Ireland, and some part of British America, indeed, carry on a considerable trade in salt provisions; but they are, I believe, the only countries in the commercial world which do so, or which export to other countries any considerable part of their butcher’s meat.
Again, we must lead off with a few words about accounting. Since our last annual report, the accounting profession has decided that equity securities owned by insurance companies must be carried on the balance sheet…
Andrew Carnegie：Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, Excerpt 62
Andrew Carnegie《Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie》· Chapter X · Leadership
The Keystone Works have always been my pet as being the parent of all the other works. But they had not been long in existence before the advantage of wrought- over cast-iron became manifest. Accordingly, to insure uniform quality, and also to make certain shapes which were not then to be obtained, we determined to embark in the manufacture of iron. My brother and I became interested with Thomas N. Miller, Henry Phipps, and Andrew Kloman in a small iron mill. Miller was the first to embark with Kloman and he brought Phipps in, lending him eight hundred dollars to buy a one-sixth interest, in November, 1861.
In contrast to this cautious view about near term return from operations, we are optimistic about prospects for long term return from major equity investments held by our insurance companies. We make no attempt to…
Graham reduces sound investing to three words: margin of safety.
Context
Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) was born in London, raised in New York, and taught at Columbia Business School before founding Graham-Newman Corporation. After suffering heavy losses around the 1929 crash, he co-wrote Security Analysis (1934) and later The Intelligent Investor (1949), turning security analysis from market forecasting into the valuation of intrinsic worth. His central rule was to buy only when price was well below a conservative estimate of value—the margin of safety.
Today's question
If you had to distill your investment approach into three words, what would they be—and does your purchase price actually leave a margin of safety?