Professor Glen Arnold

I recently heard Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger talk about the logic behind share buy-backs and dividend policy (Berkshire Hathaway AGM 6th May) – it’s really not as complicated as some people make out. Warren said: “I just want to give you a feel for how the cash flows at Berkshire.”  He showed this table: Shares outstanding […]

Ten days ago I was in an auditorium in Omaha with 60,000 other people hearing, among other things, a discussion between Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett on the subject of whether there are fewer opportunities to find bargains today than there were in past decades. Charlie Munger took the pessimistic view, but Warren Buffett thought […]

t is not enough simply to buy every company that has a NCAV under current price.  We need to be more selective than that.  To start with I whittle down the short-list of potential NCAV using a ‘throwing-out’ checklist: Foreign and opaque For a start, I’m hesitant about investing in companies run from abroad.  I don’t […]

Yesterday’s newsletter displayed results from the 1950s of using the net current asset value, NCAV, method of investing published by the originator of the idea, Benjamin Graham. Today I want to take things further by displaying more up to date evidence. A reminder of the NCAV criteria: Current asset values are taken from the balance […]

Last week, on my way to Omaha to meet fellow shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, I set myself the task of reading through the Intelligent Investor, a book written by Warren Buffett’s mentor, Benjamin Graham. This is the book that transformed Buffett’s thinking on investing when he read it as a 19 year-old. He subsequently studied under Graham […]

In the long run there is a 100% correlation between the growth in a company’s earnings and its share price performance. So, if you are an investor, concentrate on estimating earnings. For that you’ll need to thoroughly understand the company. While you are getting to know your company, and later while you are continuing to […]

Right now people seem very worried about inflation, the cost of living crisis, central banks raising interest rates and banks going bust. Then there is the potential for escalating war in Ukraine or a new one around Taiwan. These are concerns, but they shouldn’t stop us from investing. Sure, if war (or blockade) with China […]

It’s important that investors do not get too attached to a company – you can’t treat it like a grandchild. The way to do that is to fully understand it, to figure out the business model, the competitive edge, and the competence and integrity of the managerial team. If any of those fundamentals deteriorate you […]

Many people contemplating being a share investor hesitate because they think they don’t have an edge, an extra insight into companies and sectors. This is usually untrue. If you have worked in the motor industry, for example, say in sales, or manufacturing, you might be very familiar with the companies. You might know which have […]

Ideally, we investors would pick up brilliant investments like Walmart when it only has a handful or stores, or Microsoft before the PC software revolution really took off. But this is simply not possible for most of us. We only discover later in the day that these companies are so well run and so dominate […]