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11 Lessons from Terry Smith, the UK Buffett
Terry Smith is one of the UK's most legendary investors.

Since its inception in 2010, Fundsmith has earned a CAGR of 15.6% and grown to more than £23 billion in size.

Here are eleven takeaways from the man himself.

1/ Terry Smith's three-step process is to "Invest in good companies, don't overpay and do nothing".

He seeks to acquire the highest quality and durable business across the US (67% of assets) and Europe (29% of assets).

2/ "You can't play 'greater fool theory, in which you knowingly overpay, hoping that a greater fool will buy them off you at an even egregious valuation".

This is why Smith stresses you don't overpay.

3/ Fundsmith's desired companies:

• High quality with sustainable ROCE
• Hard to replicate advantages
• No excess leverage
• High certainty of growth
• Reinvests cash flows at high returns
• Resilient to change
• Attractive valuation

4/ To ensure that Fundsmith abides by its strategy, Smith adopts a list of No's that contradict his low turnover approach.

No Trading
No Hedging
No Shorting
No Nonsense
No Up Front Fees
No Index Hugging
No Market Timing
No Debt or Derivatives
No Fees for Performance

5/ Be comfortable selling a company when the valuation gets too high, or the fundamentals change, no matter how much you like the stock.

Just recently, Smith sold out of two of his longest-term holdings, $PYPL and $INTU
Here's a look at what the Fundsmith portfolio holds today.

6/ Boring is better.

7/ Be picky and wait for the pitch. Life is too short to waste time on bad companies.

8/ Spending time to find the highest quality companies will save you time and money.

9/ Smith believes that quality companies will outperform in the long-term, despite market fluctuations.

10/ "Even if you manage to identify a truly cheap value stock and time the rotation into that stock correctly, this will not transform it into a good long-term investment".

In doing this, the investor has to continuously find new stocks, which Smith feels is a waste of time.

11/ Smith has always avoided banks, and feels that most retail investors should too. Here's why.

Smith: "The answer is that having an understanding of banks would make anyone more wary of investing in them".
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Love this. Great lessons and we feel so aligned with his strategy (not entirely of course).
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Ten Lessons from Michael Burry
Michael Burry is a well-known value investor, famous for his housing short prior to the 2008 crisis. Today he manages capital at Scion Asset Management.

Here are ten takeaways from one of the world's most peculiar money managers.

1/ His weapon of choice? Research.

His playground? Anything.

"If I can find value in it, it becomes a candidate for the portfolio."

2/ "I try to buy shares of unpopular companies when they look like road kill and sell them when they've been polished up a bit".

Burry has never feared being a contrarian and following his own gut.

3/ "Investors should own a concentrated portfolio of high-quality businesses that can deliver strong organic growth even if the economy falters".

Finding businesses that can weather any storm is underrated during boom times.

4/ "I have always believed that a single talented analyst, working very hard, can cover an amazing amount of investment landscape, and this belief remains unchallenged in my mind".

They say no man is an island, but Burry believes a single analyst can get reasonably close.

5/ Not everyone can invest like Burry, find the style that marries your personality and create your edge.

6/ Locate companies with growing intrinsic value.

7/ "I care little about the level of the general market and put few restrictions on potential investments".

If Burry can find value, that's all he cares about.

8/ And he never takes breaks in the pursuit of value.

"Regardless of what the future holds, intelligent investment in common stocks offer a solid route for a reasonable return on investment going forward".

9/ Burry liked to insulate his thoughts to avoid outside influence and biases.

10/ Know what you own, why you own it and DYOR.
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Number 4 really interesting one. Normally people want bigger numbers here the opposite.
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Seth Klarman's Lessons from the GFC
In a 2010 shareholder letter, Seth Klarman described 20 lessons from the great financial crisis of 2008, which he notes “were either never learned or else were immediately forgotten by most market participants.”

Here's a memo on those lessons and our takeaways.

  1. Prepare for the unexpected in the stock market, or as Seth would say; "whatever adverse scenario you can contemplate, reality can be far worse".

  1. In some cases, like the GFC, the repercussions of easy lending standards can migrate across borders and can take the entire global economy by storm.

  1. Consideration of risk must never take a backseat to return.

Striving to grab every last ounce of potential profit can leave investors in the lurch when a downturn comes.

  1. Risk is always relative to the price paid for an investment.

Uncertainty and risk are not the same. Klarman notes that when uncertainty is great, like during the GFC, and it drives prices to especially low levels, they can become considerably less risky.

  1. The markets are governed by humans and their behaviours, not physical science.

"Reality is always too complex to be accurately modelled - attention to risk must be a 24/7/365 obsession".

  1. Avoid greed at all costs.

  1. The last price is not the true price.

The anchor of "the last price" can be warped especially in exuberant periods of the market and should be viewed with scepticism.

  1. Maintain flexibility.

  1. You have to be a dip buyer on the way down.

This is when competition is at its lowest, and fear is at its highest.

  1. Be wary of "financial innovation".

New financial products are rarely created with dark days in mind. They are seldom stress tested for such events when the times are good.

  1. Be sceptical of ratings and be sure that you are compensated for illiquidity.

  1. Be wary of leverage, in all its forms.

Even if you are unleveraged, the leverage that others' employ can impact valuations. When the access to leverage dries up, economic downturns often follow.

  1. Maintain a long-term focus.

Klarman remarks that having "clients with a long-term orientation is crucial. Nothing else is as important to the success of an investment firm."

This can also be applied to the individual investor.

Klarman also highlighted the ten "false" lessons he thinks investors mistakenly absorbed post-GFC; which we have shared below.
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Eight Takeaways from François Rochon's Annual Letter
François Rochon is the founder and Giverny Capital and is one of the most underrated investors actively managing today.

Since launching his fund in 1993, Giverny has beaten their indexes by a wide margin.

Here are eight takeaways from their recent annual letter.

  1. Rochon's Global & US portfolios underperformed their respective indexes in 2022, but the long-term CAGRs of each are still unquestioned.

Since 1998
  • Rochon US 13.6% vs 9.6%
  • Rochon Global 14.5% vs 9.0%

Since 2007
  • Rochon CA 15.8% vs 5.7%

  1. "Inflation is an inherent part of our capitalist system - we have always favoured businesses with competitive advantages which enable them to increase the price of their products and services in an inflationary environment".

Acquire businesses that can survive inflation.

  1. "Speculation creates situations of exaggerated valuations which are inevitably rectified by the invisible hand of capitalism. Governments can temporarily obstruct this invisible hand [but] cannot fundamentally alter its nature".

Durability businesses >

  1. "If the stock drops 70% to $30 in a bear market, that doesn’t automatically make it a bargain".

Be wary of catching falling knives in bear markets.

"In our view, several popular stocks in 2021 that fell sharply in 2022 could follow a similar course in the years to come".

  1. "We still believe that owning quality companies, acquired at reasonable prices, and paying little attention to the vicissitudes of the economy, geopolitics and financial markets is a winning long-term strategy".

To get rich in the stock market, you must first be in it.

  1. The valuations of crypto currencies and the companies associated with them remain "arbitrary" in Rochon's opinion.

  1. Giverny has a tradition of sharing a podium of errors in each annual letter and this year the gold medal was awarded to $LVMH, the world’s largest luxury conglomerate. The error lies in his decision not to acquire the company when he had the chance to in 2011.

  1. Why is humility so important in life and even more so in the stock market?

Here's what Rochon has to say:

"Humility is necessary to recognize that the stock market and the economy cannot be predicted in the short term".
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Nine Lessons from Morgan Housel
Morgan Housel is a partner at Collaborative Fund and the author of one of the 21st century's most influential books about money.

His first book, the Psychology of Money, recently surpassed 3 million copies sold worldwide.

Here are nine lessons from Housel's book.

  1. "Money’s greatest intrinsic value, and this can’t be overstated, is its ability to give you control over your time:.

Using money as a key to freedom over your time is something few goods can compete with.

  1. "When you define savings as the gap between your ego and your income you realize why many people with decent incomes save so little".

On the road to wealth, the savings rate is more important than the income level.

  1. “History never repeats itself; man always does".

If you can understand how human's emotions are tied to money, you can understand why history seems to repeat itself so often.

  1. "If you give luck and risk their proper respect, you realize that when judging people’s financial success, both your own and others’, it’s never as good or as bad as it seems".

Be humble enough to realise when luck is on your side.

  1. "The correct lesson to learn from surprises is that the world is surprising. Not that we should use past surprises as a guide to future boundaries".

Avoid relying too heavily on things that have worked or failed in the past.

  1. "The further back in history you look, the more general your takeaways should be".

The further back into the past we look, the more likely it is that it reflects a world entirely different to the one we are in today.

  1. When a commentator on CNBC says, “You should buy this stock,” keep in mind that they do not know who you are".

Understand that everyone is playing a different game.

  1. "Capitalism is hard. But part of the reason this happens is because getting money and keeping money are two different skills".

It requires two different mindsets to accumulate wealth and keep it.

  1. “Judging how you've done by focusing on individual investments makes winners look more brilliant than they were, and losers appear more regrettable than they should”.

You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune. Learn to become comfortable being wrong.
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Eight Lessons from Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel is one of the world's most prominent venture capitalists with a net worth exceeding $8 billion. He is known for his early investments in PayPal, and Facebook, and for co-founding Palantir. Here are eight lessons from the man himself.

Get in early and exploit tax shields.

In 1999, Thiel invested $2k in PayPal using a Roth IRA. In 2002, eBay acquired $PYPL and Thiel netted $28.5m. He used these funds to invest in more start-ups, including Facebook in 2004.
Today that IRA is worth more than $5b.

  1. Thiel was a big fan of monopolies.

In his 2014 essay, ‘Competition is for Losers’, he outlined how you can identify which companies are pretending to be monopolies and which are trying to hide their monopoly status.

  1. Understand how you, and others, are influenced by other people. Thiel was a pupil of mimetic desire; the idea that our wants and desires are borrowed from our friends, family, and idols.

Understand how humans think, and you can identify companies that are set up to benefit.

  1. Moving from zero to one is a concept Thiel is famous for, and the phrase is the namesake of his book.

Every time we create something new, the world moves from zero to one. That is where the largest returns are found.

  1. "The prospect of being lonely but right, dedicating your life to something that no one else believes in, is already hard. The prospect of being lonely and wrong can be unbearable".

If you want to succeed, don't be afraid of making mistakes or looking stupid.

  1. "In the most dysfunctional organizations, signalling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work, if this describes your company, you should quit now".

If you are not challenging yourself, you risk stagnation.

  1. "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas".

Utilise first principles thinking.

  1. "Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius".

Always think for yourself.
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The book "Contrarian" is a pretty good read and offers a different perspective on Thiel than his self-penned book Zero to One !
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7 Lessons from Stanley Druckenmiller's Lost Tree Club Speech
Stan Druckenmiller is one of the world’s greatest money managers and has traded through market cycles for more than 30 years.

In 2015, he gave what is now a timeless discussion about markets and processes at the Lost Tree Club.

Here are 7 takeaways from his speech.

  1. Druck attests that he is not a genius. He was not in the top percentile at school. Instead, he believes that he made his success from three things:

• Passion for the business
• Great mentorship
• Risk management

  1. "The mistake I’d say 98% of money managers and individuals make is they feel like they got to be playing in a bunch of stuff. And if you really see it, put all your eggs in one basket and then watch the basket very carefully".

  1. He says one his mentors taught him two crucial things:

• Never invest in the present; look 18 months out.
• The central bank moves the market, not earnings.

"If you invest in the present, you’re going to get run over!"

  1. Druck learned from Soros that "when you see it, bet big".

He also humorously remarks that Soros spent 10% the amount of time working than him, and still outperformed.

  1. When the facts change, you have to be able to change your mind.

  1. After losing $3 billion on tech stocks during the 2000 bubble, Druck famously said "I didn't learn anything. I already knew I wasn't supposed to do that".

  1. What Druck looks for in money managers:

• Passion
• Ability to manage bear markets
• Humility and open-mindedness
• Integrity
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Insights from Joel Greenblatt
Joel Greenblatt founded a hedge fund, Gotham Capital in 1985 that would return a 30% CAGR over the next decade. He made his name focussing on spinoffs, corporate restructurings, and other special situations.

These 12 insights will make you a better investor.

But first, did you know that Gotham still exists? Today it's called Gotham Funds.

Outside of managing capital, you may know Greenblatt from his two most popular books:

• You can be a stock market genius and;
• The little book that beats the market

Greenblatt has a long history of educating investors. In the mid-90s, he taught value & special situations class at Columbia University.

His goal was to give students "the course that I never had and that I wish I had".

If you'd like to get access to those lectures, then look no further 👇


Now, onto the insights.

  1. "Position sizing is the most important thing. Being too timid on the few good ideas that come your way is the biggest mistake people make".

  • Investing mistakes are not limited to the ones that you lose money in. Incorrectly sizing multibaggers can be just as costly.

  1. "Choosing individual stocks without any idea of what you're looking for is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match. You may live, but you're still an idiot".

  • Know what you are looking to find before you start researching companies.

  1. "Look down, not up, when making your initial investment decision. If you don’t lose money, most of the remaining alternatives are good ones".

  • Instead of asking "what's the upside?", ensure to think just as hard about the potential downside.

  1. "If you spend your energies looking for and analysing situations not closely followed by other informed investors, your chance of finding bargains greatly increases".

  • Don't follow the herd if you are looking for market-beating returns.

  1. "I wait until an investment idea is so good, it hits me over the head like an anvil. Figure out what something is worth and pay a lot less".

  • You don't have to be first into an idea. Exercise patience for obvious ideas.

  1. "Something out of the ordinary course of business creates an investment opportunity - spinoffs, mergers, restructurings, rights offerings, bankruptcies, liquidations, asset sales, distributions".

  • Keep an eye out for one-off events as they can "result in big profits".

  1. "Why do the prices fluctuate so widely when values can’t possibly? I don’t know and I don’t care. I just want to take advantage of it".

  • Don't let the noise distract you from finding opportunities.

  1. "The market's very emotional but over time, doing something logical and systematic does work. The market eventually gets it right".

  • As Ben Graham would say, the market votes in the short term, and weighs over the long term.

  1. "Over the long term, despite significant drops from time to time, stocks will be one of your best investment options. The trick is to GET to the long term. Think in terms of 5 years, 10 years and longer".

  • It pays to think long-term.

  1. "Sticking to investing in only a small number of companies that you understand well, rather than moving down the list to your 30th or fiftieth 50th pick, would create a much greater potential to earn above-average returns".

  • Develop a core circle of competence.

  1. "When it comes to long-term investing, doing "less" is often "more".

  • The urge to do something is the enemy of the long-term investor. Good investing can sometimes be boring.

  1. "Remember, it’s the quality of your ideas, not the quantity that will result in the big money".

  • Quality > Quantity
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Highlights from the Berkshire Letter 2022
Each year, investors eagerly await the latest shareholder letter from Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

With a 4% return (vs -18.1% for the S&P) in 2022, $BRKA has compounded at 19.8% since 1965 vs the S&P's 9.9%.

Here are the 14 key takeaways from this year's letter.

  1. Be a business picker, not a stock picker.

  1. Efficient markets only exist on paper.

  1. Never underestimate the importance of good luck, and you only need a few great decisions to pay for the bad ones.

  1. Being a long-term investor pays dividends, literally.

• In 1994, the $KO position had a cost basis of $1.3b and yielded $75m annually.

• By 2022 it was valued at $25b and kicked off $704m per anum.

  1. Water the flowers, not the weeds.

  1. Creative destruction.

  1. Share repurchases can be wonderful.

  1. But not all share repurchases are created equal.

  1. Be wary of the rise in imaginative accounting.

• Buffett calls this practice "disgusting".

  1. Focus on what you can know.

• Buffett doesn’t know how the US Government’s deficit will cause problems, just that it will eventually.

  1. Berkshire pays…. a lot of tax.

• But Buffett claims he'd like to pay even more in the future.

  1. Advice on finding an investment partner.

• "Find a very smart high-grade partner – preferably slightly older than you – and then listen very carefully to what he says”.

  1. The future of Berkshire has no finish line.

  1. Lastly, here are some sage pieces of advice from Buffett's right-hand man, Charlie Munger.
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Mohnish Pabrai - The Dhandho Investor
Mohnish Pabrai is a close friend of Buffett and Munger and is one of the world's most underrated investors.

He admits to mimicking the investing styles of Buffett of Joel Greenblatt and has had tremendous success.

These 12 insights will make you a better investor.

  1. Mohnish Pabrai is known for buying deeply distressed companies, but he also favours other forms of investment.

  • Here are his 5 types of business that can lead to a multi-bagger investment.

  1. Pabrai utilises the Dhandho Framework.

  • "Heads, I win. Tails, I don’t lose much.”

The premise of this strategy is to locate opportunities with considerable upside and limited downside.
High reward, low risk.

  1. In his book, The Dhandho Investor, he lays out the nine core principles of his framework.
You can find them below.

  1. He is known as a "checklist investor" and uses lists to avoid repeating past mistakes.

  • Here is one of Pabrai's checklists to run through before investing in a company.

  1. "Mistakes are the best teachers. One does not learn from success. It is desirable to learn vicariously from other people's failures, but it gets much more firmly seared in when they are your own".

  • There is no greater teacher your own failings.

  1. "Einstein recognised the power of simplicity. He noted that the five ascending levels of intellect were Smart, Intelligent, Brilliant, Genius, Simple".

  • The greatest sign of intellect is the ability to make the complex appear simple.

  1. "Wall Street sometimes gets confused between risk and uncertainty, and you can profit handsomely from that confusion".

  • This relates to Pabrai's "heads I win, tails I don't lose much" framework.

  1. "You don’t make money when you buy stocks. And you don’t make money when you sell stocks. You make money by waiting".

  • The hardest part is keeping your emotions in check between buying and selling your investments

  1. "If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldnt have even a fraction of my current success".

  • Being original is overrated

  1. "The businesses that are monopolies, typically go to some serious lengths, to try to convince you that they are not a monopoly and the competitive ones will try to convince you that they have all these competitive advantages".

  • Focus not on what they say but what they do

  1. "Read voraciously and wait patiently, and from time to time these amazing bets will present themselves."

  • Nothing can substitute patience and conducting your own research.

  1. "I don't look for reasons to buy a given business. I look for reasons to reject buying the stock. I'm looking for why should I turn it down".

  • Like Munger says. Invert, always invert.
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"Heads, I win. Tails, I don’t lose much"
I like this.
Adding this quote to our playbook in a section on "Seek Return Asymmetry"
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