My experiences with deep value investing

Deep value investing or cigar butt investing, is buying stocks whose price is way below the various statistical measures of value of the company. Now, value can be measured by various means such as PE ratios, discounted cash flow analysis or asset values. In case of deep value investing, one is investing in stocks which are selling at a very low PE, below book value or in some cases even below cash held by the company.

This method of investing was introduced and popularized by the father of value investing – Benjamin graham in his classic security analysis (A must read for any serious investor). In this book, graham talks about companies selling below working capital, book value or in some extreme cases, even the cash held by the company.

This mode of analysis is a quantitative, statistics driven method where in one holds a large number of such ‘Cheap’ companies. A few positions work out, a few go down the drain and rest just stagnate doing nothing. In spite of such a mix, the overall portfolio does quite well and one is able to earn decent returns at low risk

The key element in this investment operation is wide diversification and constant search for new ideas to replace the duds in the portfolio.

Initial foray into high quality
My first exposure to sensible investing (reading economictimes and watching CNBC does not count in that), was when I read the book – The warren buffett way. I was completely mesmerized by this person and read all I could on him for the next few years.

After burning my finger a bit during the dotcom bust, my initial investments were in the warren buffett mold (high quality stocks with competitive advantages). My initial investments were in asian paints, pidilite, Marico etc - the so called consumption stocks except that they were not called by this label then.

I have always wondered why these stocks are called consumption stocks? are capital goods and real estate ‘un-consumption’ companies whose products no one wants to consume J ? Anyway I digress

An experiment in deep value

Around 2006-2007, i decided to run a small experiment of investing in deep value, statistically cheap stocks. I eventually invested around 10-15% of my portfolio in  names such as Denso, Cheviot company, Facor alloys and VST industries (see here), etc for a period of around 3-4 years.

I decided to terminate this approach in 2011 and have been exiting the positions since then. In the rest of the post I will cover my experience and learnings from this long run experiment.

The results

The results from this portion of the portfolio (which was tracked separately) was actually quite decent. I was able to beat the market by 5-6% points during this period. At the same time, this part of the portfolio lagged the high quality portion by 6-7% over the same time period. The difference may not appear to be big, but  adds up over time to a considerable difference due to the power of compounding.

I have not completely forsaken this mode of investing and once in while could buy something which is very cheap and has a near term catalyst to unlock the value.

Why did I quit ?
I did not quit for the obvious reason of lower returns than the rest of the portfolio. The lower return played a part, but if I compare the effort invested in building and maintaining a deep value portfolio ,  it is much lower than trying to identify a high quality and reasonably priced company .

If one compares, the return on time invested (versus return on capital), the balance could tilt towards the deep value style of investing.
Let me list the reasons for moving away from this style of investing

Temperament – The no.1 reason is temperament. I have realized that I do not have the temperament to invest in this fashion. I do not like to buy poorly  managed, weak companies which are extremely cheap and then wait for that one spike when I can sell it off and move on to the next idea. It makes my stomach churn everytime I read the annual report of such companies and see the horrible economics of the business and miserable performance of the management.
Life is too short such for such torture

Re-investment risk- The other problem in this mode of investing is the constant need for new ideas , to replace the duds in the portfolio. This exposes one to re-investment risk (replacing one bad stock with another bad idea), especially during bull markets.
Value traps – This part of the market (deep value) is filled with stocks which can be called as value traps. These are companies which appear cheap on statistical basis, and remain so forever. The reasons vary from a bad cyclical industry to poor corporate management. In all such cases, the loss is not so much as the actual loss of money, but  the opportunity loss of missing better performing ideas.

Higher trading – The final problem in this mode of investing is the constant churn in the portfolio resulting in higher transaction costs and higher taxes, both of which reduce the overall returns.

The lessons
I know some of you, have never followed this mode of investing and have always invested in quality. The problem with investing in quality is the risk of over payment, especially if the quality is just an illusion (faked as in the case of several companies in the real estate sector in 2007-2008). Anyway, that is a topic for another post.

I am constantly experimenting , with a small amount , with new approaches and ideas. If there is a valid approach, which matches my overall value investing approach (momentum and technical trading is out), I will try it and see if it works for me. It is one thing to read about it and another to put some money into to it and immerse oneself in it.

As some has said – an expert is someone who has made the most mistakes and survived. Well, at the current rate of making mistakes, I hope to become an expert in the next 10-20 years J.

Letter to shareholders from Warren buffett – Some thoughts

Warren buffett as most of you must be aware is considered as one of the foremost investors. He is the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and publishes an annual letter to shareholders which is a must read for any aspiring or seasoned value investor. You can access his letters here. The 2008 letters was published more than a week ago and I downloaded it the moment it was posted and read through it immediately (yes I am a complete fan !).

Some thoughts –

The options bet

One of most discussed topic about buffett is the options bet he has taken. The argument goes like this – Buffett has claimed that derivatives are a weapon of financial mass destruction and yet he has gone ahead and invested in the same instruments. He is being irresponsible and has doomed his company by this bet

Those who write the above are highlighting two points of their own ignorance

- Derivatives are dangerous for those who don’t know what they are doing. This is similar to giving a knife in the hands of a child. I don’t think any journalist, no matter how anti – buffett would consider him to be a novice investor. He has clearly spelled out what kind of bet he has taken in the letter and what are the risks associated with these instruments.

Following is the comment by buffett on the same above point in a recent CNBC interview

JOE: Those are derivatives. You don't like derivatives, but you used them in that case, right?

BUFFETT: I--well, we've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous. I've always said they're dangerous. I said they were financial weapons of mass destruction. But uranium is dangerous, and I just went through a nuclear electric plant about two weeks ago. Cars are dangerous.

JOE: Yeah

BUFFETT: But I mean, every American wants to have one. You know, the--a lot of things can be dangerous, but generally we regulate how they're used. I mean, there was a--there was some guard up there with a machine gun on me, you know, when I was at the nuclear plant the other day. So we use lots of things daily that are dangerous, but we generally pay some attention to how they're used.

- They are getting confused between the possible and the probable. Let me explain – It is possible I will become a billonaire in the next 10 years and will have a personal jet . The probability of that happening is 0.0000001%. Buffett’s option bet stands to lose 37 billion dollars if the 4 indices on which he has written the puts go to zero. Let me tell you this – If these four main markets go to 0 in the next 10-15 years, money would be least of our worries. I for one be forced to work on a farm or forage for food as the markets as we know would not exist.

When I first read of these puts, my thought process was that these were akin to an insurance contract based on a long term event with the premium paid upfront (similar for CAT insurance written by Berkshire hathaway). Buffett has explained it in a similar manner in detail in the annual report. I would recommend you to read the explaination in detail.

In addition, the option bet is equivalent to taking a long term loan where the interest rate of the loan can vary depending on the final payout.

Drop in profits
Most of headlines are screaming a major drop in profits. Buffett in clear, uncertain language has written that the profits of his company are very lumpy and will vary depending on the sale of investments. In certain years, buffett sells off overvalued investments and those gains are realised in the net profit. In the subsequent years, in absence of any such gain the year on year comparison looks bad (look at page 28 of the annual report and the explainatory note at the bottom)

The company’s operating business had a approximate cash flow of 9 bn. However various write offs and other change has result in a drop in the quarter’s net profit. The bad economy has definitely affected the company, but the results are not as bad as they appear on the face of it.

Mea culpa
Buffett has admitted to two mistakes - his timing on purchasing Conco phillips and two irish banks. I have been reading and following buffett over a decade and have seen his mistakes to be sometime more profitable than most of the successes of other people. In any case, these could be genuine mistakes and could cost Berkshire 1-2 % of their networth in the worst case scenario.

Looking closely
If you look closely at the results and compare across the years, you will see that the insurance subs and utilities are doing well. Float continue to increase at a steady rate with cost of the float being below zero (which is more important than premium growth) . Both these subs which form a major portion of Berkshire’s business have actually done well compared to the overall economic environment.

The other business are doing quite fine considering the horrible economic environment (see pg 61 of the 2008 annual report)

But the price has dropped ?
Yes the price has dropped and the CDS spreads have widened. Do you always believe the market to be right and the price to be aribiter of value ? Well then we are speaking different language. The markets are often but not always right.

Berkshire CDS spreads are at record levels signalling liquidity or credit issues. To validate that, look at the balance sheet of the company and you will find that the company has 25 billion of cash and equivalents (after all the investment which buffett has done last year). Do you really think a company with 11Bn+ operating cash flow and huge cash reserves will go bankrupt ?

Buffett fan ?
You can rightly accuse me of being a Buffett fan. However to that name, please add the names of Seth klarman, Phil fischer, Charlie munger, Marty whitman, Bill miller, eddie lampart, Rakesh jhunjhunwala and Chandrakant sampat.

I am follower of all great value investors and try to use every opportunity to learn from them. I have never blindly followed their picks or tried to imitate any of these investors, but I always try to learn from each one of them, even if they have been wrong a few times.

Let me ask you this – If you wanted to learn how to play cricket or golf or tennis, would you learn it from sachin tendulkar or Tiger woods or Roger federer (if they were ready to teach someone) ? Sure these players make mistakes and lose matches, but does that take away the fact that these players are the one of the greatest sportsmen in their fields?

It is easy for armchair players or armchair investors to critize from the comfort of their seats, especially after the event with a 20/20 hindsight. Majority of the criticism I have read about buffett and the other investors lacks rigrious detail and analysis and is usually along the lines – The stock price has dropped and hence he is doing something wrong !!.

Berkshire hathaway annual meeting and quarterly results

Berkshire hathaway (warren buffett’s company) is having their annual meeting over this weekend. This meeting is called the woodstock of capitalists. I have been reading and following buffett for the last 10 years and tend to read his every interview, speech and the Q&A session of the annual meetings.

You can find a great compilation of everything buffett here

His letter to shareholder are a must read and I would recommend reading them multiple times.

Berkshire declared their quarterly results and reported a 65% drop in profits. Although as an indian investor, we cannot invest in this company, I would recommend reading the letter to shareholders and analysing the company to learn how a great company works and what it means to be shareholder oriented (the company is a gold standard).

I cannot explain the company in detail here. However if you have been following the company and have an idea about it, below is my analysis of the cause of the drop in profits.

Buffett has called derivatives as financial weapons of mass destruction and has cautioned against them. I am pretty sure that media, seeing a drop in profits due to derivatives, would crow about how the world’s greatest investor has himself got burnt by the same. However one has to understand that though buffett has warned against using derivatives if the company cannot understand the risks behind it, he himself understands them better than most and clearly knows what he is doing.

The quarter’s loss have been due to mark to market loss on the put options and CDS written by buffett. The put option buffett has written is similar to supercat insurance written by the company. The company gets a premium and insures a low probability event. if the event occurs then the company has to pay the insured amount. now over the years buffett has indicated the they could lose money on specific policies, but over a long term , they work with the odds on their side and would make a profit.

In case of the put, although we do not have the specific details, i would assume a similar approach. In addition buffett has indicated that he looks at the exposure also (total max loss) and no matter what the odds would never risk a huge amount. The puts are deep puts and the odds of the markets being lower 20 years later is low (we dont know what is the strike price of the puts, but they are based on the index and not on a company).

Berkshire accounts for MTM losses or profits which are accounting or book keeping losses/ profits if the options are closed today (unlikely to happen). So the company gets to keep the premium, invest it and get a good return from it for the next 20 years. This is on a low probability event that the market would be way lower 20 years later, in which case the company may well exercise the put and buy the index at the ultra-low valuations.

You would think that if the above is such a good deal, then why are other companies not doing it?

It is explained in the current year’s letter to shareholder and I can think of the following reasons

- The accounting as we can see in this quarter is very volatile. There are almost no companies which would risk a billion dollar hit to their results via such derivatives. The CEO would lose his job for such results
- There is counter party risk too. The buyer of the put option should believe that the company writing the put will be around 20 years later to pay up. Very few companies can do that

ofcourse media is going to make a show about this drop as they dont understand the company or how the options in this case are different from the one's written by banks and other financial institutions.

How to be a better investor – from Warren buffett and Charlie munger

Berkshire had their annual meeting on May 5th and 6th. During the Q&A session the following question was asked on how to become a better investor. I have read something similar from warren buffett earlier and could not resist posting the answer to the question again. The reply goes to the heart of becoming a better investor and I try to follow it in an effort to improve myself as an investor. Time will tell if I have been successful at it or not.

What is best way to a become better investor? Get an MBA, is it genetic, read more “Poor Charlie's Almanac”?

WB: Read everything you can. In my own case, by the time I was 10, I read every book in the Omaha Public Library that had to do with investing, and many I read twice. You just have to fill up your mind with competing thoughts and then sort them out as to what makes sense over time. And once you've done that, you ought to jump in the water. The difference between investing on paper and in real money is like the difference in just reading a romance novel and…doing something else. The earlier you start the better in terms of reading. I read a book at 19 that formed my framework ever since. What I'm doing today at 76 is running things in the same thought pattern that I got from a book at 19. Read, and then on small scale do some of it yourself.

CM: Sandy Gottesman, runs a large and successful investment operation. Notice his employment practices. When someone comes in to interview with Sandy, no matter his hage, Sandy asks, “what do you own and why do you own it?” And if you haven't been interested enough in the subject to know, you better go somewhere else.

WB: If you buy a farm, you'd say “I'm buying this because I expect it to produce 120 bushels per acre, etc…from your calculations, not based on what you saw on television that day or what a neighbor said. It should be the same thing with stock. Take a yellow pad, and say I'm going to buy GM for $18 billion, and here's why. And if you cant write a good essay on the subject, you have no business buying one share.

Increasing the circle of competence

The ‘circle of competence’ is a term coined by warren buffett. It roughly means companies, industries or businesses one knows well and can understand in depth to be able to analyse and predict the economics of the business for the next ten odd years.

In order to improve and increase the depth of my circle of competence, I have developed a business analysis worksheet which I have posted here again in the ‘My analysis worksheets’ section of the sidebar.

This worksheet is still work in progress. I would be uploading updated versions of it in the future.

Please feel free to download the worksheet, review and critique it, and send me any feedback on it. Please send me an email on valueinvestorindia@googlegroups.com

I would be uploading individual company analysis in the future too.

Learnings from the Book: The warren buffett way

I have been reading again the excellent Book ‘The warren buffett way’. This book was my first exposure to Warren buffett and his approach to Investing. I have followed and learnt from him since then. The following were the key re-learnings I have had over the past few days (I am yet to finish the book)


- ROE (Return on equity) is one the most important indicator of the economic performance of a company. A company can raise this measure through five different means
o Higher Asset turns (Sales / Total assets)
o Higher margins
o Higher leverage
o Cheaper leverage
o Lower taxes.

I have seen the above happen for several companies in the past few years and have seen the stock price follow the improvement in ROE

For ex: Bluestar (better asset turns), ICICI bank (cheaper leverage, higher margins).

- Inflation does not improve ROE and actually reduces the net return to an investor
- The best companies are the ones which have strong franchies like crisil. Over time some of them become weak franchises. Further weakning of the franchise leads to a good business and then finally to a commodity company.
- Pricing strength is a key attribute of Franchises. These companies can raise prices even when the demand is flat and can earn good returns.

Notes from Columbia Business School trip’s meeting with Warren buffett

I always make it a point to read the transcripts/ notes of these meetings. A lot of it is the same stuff, but I am always able to find a few gems of wisdom in buffett’s replies to the Q&A. Some of the interesting comments are below

Link : http://investoblog.blogspot.com/

Question 3: What do you read?Everything. Annual reports, 10-K’s, 10-Q’s, biographies, history. When he’s in airplanes, he’ll read the instructions on the seat backs. Two books he recommended specifically are Poor Charlie’s Almanack and Personal History, Kate Graham’s bio. He rarely ever reads fiction, feels like it would be taking up time he could be reading about business. He reads five newspapers a day, and plays bridge twelve hours a week.


Question 4: Please share your thoughts on your position in Remy International and the auto parts industry in general.“Boy, I thought airlines were tough." They took the position in Remy three years ago.When your big customers are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, it’s tough to get price increases. You can’t survive as a high-cost producer in this industry. You can’t pass through costs like you could in the old times.


Question 5: What investment lessons have you learned?He keeps making mistakes. Predicting the future is hard, and it will keep being hard. As long as his mistakes are in his analysis, that’s okay. When you buy a stock, you need to be able to get out a yellow legal pad and write down, in one page why it is cheap. For example, “I am buying the Coca Cola company for $14b for x, y, and z reasons and I think it is worth far, far more than that.”



He finds the game fun and always has. If you like it, keep practicing. It’s hugely important to buy stocks on your own. By doing that, you learn in a way that you can’t from reading books. Temperament and emotions are hugely important, and you need to experience that first-hand.

Warren Buffett on Benjamin Graham

Found the following post on motley fool. I am waiting eagerly for the complete transcript of the Q&A though (emphasis mine)

I recently had the pleasure of taking a large group of students to Omaha for a Q&A with Buffett. When available, I'll post the results of that Q&A if there is any interest here. In the meantime, I thought I'd mention my most memorable take-away from that meeting.A student noted that Buffett has been a much more successful investor than Graham, and yet Buffett attributes much of his success to Graham, why is that?For the first time, I heard Buffett address this issue head on. Buffett said that it's true, Graham never got really rich from investing. Ben was much more interested in ideas than in making money. However, the lessons Ben taught are very profitable (in order):1. Stocks represent part ownership in the business. Before Ben, Warren charted prices and did lots of other silly stuff. Ben's perspective was eye-opening.2. The concept of Mr. Market is vital. The market is very efficient, but not perfectly efficient--and that difference can make you very, very rich. At any point in time, the market price is usually, but not always, appropriate. An intelligent investor is one who can tell the difference between the current market price for a stock and a resonable interpretation of what that part of the business is really worth.3. The margin of safety concept is also vital. Once an intelligent investor discerns the difference between the current market price for a stock and a resonable interpretation of what that part of the business is really worth, it becomes important to build in an appropriate margin of safety.These lessons are Graham's most important contribution to Buffett and to you and me. Graham's sensible perspective, combined with Phil Fisher's (and T. Rowe Price's) insights on wonderful companies, has made all the difference for Buffett. If we are paying attention, they can make all the difference for us too.

Warren Buffett, Unplugged

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB113175788303495486.html

Good article on warren buffett !!

Q&A with Warren buffett (Tuck school of business)

http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/investment/WarrenBuffett.html

Some excerpts from the Q&A

Q: In your letters you speak frequently of the importance of not over-complicating things. What are your secrets to keeping your life simple?A: When making investments, pretend in life you have a punch-card with only 20 boxes, and every time you make an investment you punch a slot. It will discipline you to only make investments you have extreme confidence in. Big money is made by obvious things. If using a discount rate of 8% vs. 10% is going to make or break an investment idea, it's probably not a good idea. Back in 1951 Moody's published thick handbooks by industry of every stock in circulation. I went through all of them, thousands of pages, motivated by the hope that a great idea was just on the next page. I found companies like National American Insurance and Western Insurance Securities Company that nobody was paying attention to that were trading for far less than their intrinsic values. Last year we found a steel company on the Korean Stock Exchange that had no analyst coverage, no research, but was the most profitable steel company in the world


Q: I have worked in various technologies businesses, but I understand that you do not typically invest in the technology sector. Why is that? How do you view technology as an individual and as an investor?A: Technology is clearly a boost to business productivity and a driver of better consumer products and the like, so as an individual I have a high appreciation for the power of technology. I have avoided technology sectors as an investor because in general I don't have a solid grasp of what differentiates many technology companies. I don't know how to spot durable competitive advantage in technology. To get rich, you find businesses with durable competitive advantage and you don't overpay for them. Technology is based on change; and change is really the enemy of the investor. Change is more rapid and unpredictable in technology relative to the broader economy. To me, all technology sectors look like 7-foot hurdles


Q: In many of your letters you speak about the importance of looking through the windshield and not the rearview mirror. What issues do you think people today are mistakenly looking at through the rearview mirror?A: Investors are always looking for the holy grail, the next great idea that will carry performance and pension returns for the several years. Right now its 'alternative investments' - private equity, hedge funds, the assets that have outperformed public equities for the past five years since the tech bubble burst. There's so much money chasing these ideas now that the returns in the future will probably not be as good. At some point, public equities will become good investments again and fewer people will be looking at them. At Berkshire, we look at a lot of "super-cat" (super catastrophe) insurance business that few firms will write. The challenge is determining when there's a paradigm shift, when the future will no longer look like the past. It's probable that the next hundred years of hurricane activity will not look like the past hundred years. Another example, we write a lot of D and O insurance, Directors and Officers liability. Post Enron, I feel strongly that juries will award much harsher penalties to victims of corporate fraud, etc. than they would have five years ago before the average juror watched hours of news stories about all the scandals. There's no model that can quantify that added risk, but it's a risk that won't be captured looking at historical data.

My thought -  The last Q&A  throws up an interesting question for Indian investors. After 3 years of great returns, are we as investors also operating with a rear mirror view? Any thoughts ?

Warren Buffett on 'Dividend Policy'

Dividend policy is often reported to shareholders, but seldom explained. A company will say something like, "Our goal is to pay out 40% to 50% of earnings and to increase dividends at a rate at least equal to the rise in the CPI". And that's it - no analysis will be supplied as to why that particular policy is best for the owners of the business. Yet, allocation of capital is crucial to business and investment management. Because it is, we believe managers and owners should think hard about the circumstances under which earnings should be retained and under which they should be distributed.
The first point to understand is that all earnings are not created equal. In many businesses particularly those that have high asset/profit ratios - inflation causes some or all of the reported earnings to become ersatz. The ersatz portion - let's call these earnings "restricted" - cannot, if the business is to retain its economic position, be distributed as dividends. Were these earnings to be paid out, the business would lose ground in one or more of the following areas: its ability to maintain its unit volume of sales, its long-term competitive position, its financial strength. No matter how conservative its payout ratio, a company that consistently distributes restricted earnings is destined for oblivion unless equity capital is otherwise infused.
Restricted earnings are seldom valueless to owners, but they often must be discounted heavily. In effect, they are conscripted by the business, no matter how poor its economic potential. (This retention-no-matter-how-unattractive-the-return situation was communicated unwittingly in a marvelously ironic way by Consolidated Edison a decade ago. At the time, a punitive regulatory policy was a major factor causing the company's stock to sell as low as one-fourth of book value; i.e., every time a dollar of earnings was retained for reinvestment in the business, that dollar was transformed into only 25 cents of market value. But, despite this gold-into-lead process, most earnings were reinvested in the business rather than paid to owners. Restricted earnings need not concern us further in this dividend discussion.
Let's turn to the much-more-valued unrestricted variety. These earnings may, with equal feasibility, be retained or distributed. In our opinion, management should choose whichever course makes greater sense for the owners of the business. This principle is not universally accepted. For a number of reasons managers like to withhold unrestricted, readily distributable earnings from shareholders - to expand the corporate empire over which the managers rule, to operate from a position of exceptional financial comfort, etc. But we believe there is only one valid reason for retention. Unrestricted earnings should be retained only when there is a reasonable prospect - backed preferably by historical evidence or, when appropriate, by a thoughtful analysis of the future - that for every dollar retained by the corporation, at least one dollar of market value will be created for owners. This will happen only if the capital retained produces incremental earnings equal to, or above, those generally available to investors.
To illustrate, let's assume that an investor owns a risk-free 10% perpetual bond with one very unusual feature. Each year the investor can elect either to take his 10% coupon in cash, or to reinvest the coupon in more 10% bonds with identical terms; i.e., a perpetual life and coupons offering the same cash-or-reinvest option. If, in any given year, the prevailing interest rate on long-term, risk-free bonds is 5%, it would be foolish for the investor to take his coupon in cash since the 10% bonds he could instead choose would be worth considerably more than 100 cents on the dollar. Under these circumstances, the investor wanting to get his hands on cash should take his coupon in additional bonds and then immediately sell them. By doing that, he would realize more cash than if he had taken his coupon directly in cash. Assuming all bonds were held by rational investors, no one would opt for cash in an era of 5% interest rates, not even those bondholders needing cash for living purposes.
If, however, interest rates were 15%, no rational investor would want his money invested for him at 10%. Instead, the investor would choose to take his coupon in cash, even if his personal cash needs were nil. The opposite course - reinvestment of the coupon - would give an investor additional bonds with market value far less than the cash he could have elected. If he should want 10% bonds, he can simply take the cash received and buy them in the market, where they will be available at a large discount.
Think about whether a company's unrestricted earnings should be retained or paid out. The analysis is much more difficult and subject to error because the rate earned on reinvested earnings is not a contractual figure, as in our bond case, but rather a fluctuating figure. Owners must guess as to what the rate will average over the intermediate future. However, once an informed guess is made, the rest of the analysis is simple: you should wish your earnings to be reinvested if they can be expected to earn high returns, and you should wish them paid to you if low returns are the likely outcome of reinvestment.
Many corporate managers reason very much along these lines in determining whether subsidiaries should distribute earnings to their parent company. At that level,. the managers have no trouble thinking like intelligent owners. But payout decisions at the parent company level often are a different story. Here managers frequently have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of their shareholder-owners.
With this schizoid approach, the CEO of a multi-divisional company will instruct Subsidiary A, whose earnings on incremental capital may be expected to average 5%, to distribute all available earnings in order that they may be invested in Subsidiary B, whose earnings on incremental capital are expected to be 15%. The CEO's business school oath will allow no lesser behavior. But if his own long-term record with incremental capital is 5% - and market rates are 10% - he is likely to impose a dividend policy on shareholders of the parent company that merely follows some historical or industry-wide payout pattern. Furthermore, he will expect managers of subsidiaries to give him a full account as to why it makes sense for earnings to be retained in their operations rather than distributed to the parent-owner. But seldom will he supply his owners with a similar analysis pertaining to the whole company.
In judging whether managers should retain earnings, shareholders should not simply compare total incremental earnings in recent years to total incremental capital because that relationship may be distorted by what is going on in a core business. During an inflationary period, companies with a core business characterized by extraordinary economics can use small amounts of incremental capital in that business at very high rates of return. But, unless they are experiencing tremendous unit growth, outstanding businesses by definition generate large amounts of excess cash. If a company sinks most of this money in other businesses that earn low returns, the company's overall return on retained capital may nevertheless appear excellent because of the extraordinary returns being earned by the portion of earnings incrementally invested in the core business. The situation is analogous to a Pro-Am golf event: even if all of the amateurs are hopeless duffers, the team's best-ball score will be respectable because of the dominating skills of the professional.
Many corporations that consistently show good returns both on equity and on overall incremental capital have, indeed, employed a large portion of their retained earnings on an economically unattractive, even disastrous, basis. Their marvelous core businesses, however, whose earnings grow year after year, camouflage repeated failures in capital allocation elsewhere (usually involving high-priced acquisitions of businesses that have inherently mediocre economics). The managers at fault periodically report on the lessons they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons. (Failure seems to go to their heads.)
In such cases, shareholders would be far better off if earnings were retained only to expand the high-return business, with the balance paid in dividends or used to repurchase stock (an action that increases the owners' interest in the exceptional business while sparing them participation in subpar businesses). Managers of high-return businesses who consistently employ much of the cash thrown off by those businesses in other ventures with low returns should be held to account for those allocation decisions, regardless of how profitable the overall enterprise is.
Nothing in this discussion is intended to argue for dividends that bounce around from quarter to quarter with each wiggle in earnings or in investment opportunities. Shareholders of public corporations understandably prefer that dividends be consistent and predictable. Payments, therefore, should reflect long-term expectations for both earnings and returns on incremental capital. Since the long-term corporate outlook changes only infrequently, dividend patterns should change no more often. But over time distributable earnings that have been withheld by managers should earn their keep. If earnings have been unwisely retained, it is likely that managers, too, have been unwisely retained.
Historically, Berkshire has earned well over market rates on retained earnings, thereby creating over one dollar of market value for every dollar retained. Under such circumstances, any distribution would have been contrary to the financial interest of shareholders, large or small.

The wisdom of warren buffett

I am reading the annual letters to shareholder from warren buffet again. Anyone wanting an education on investing should read and re-read these letters. Found several great quotes/ ideas which I will be sharing over a few posts.

On Temperament
“Our advantage, was attitude: we learned from Ben Graham that the key to successful investing was the purchase of shares in good businesses when market prices were at a large discount from underlying business values.  We have no idea how long the excesses will last, nor do we know what will change the attitudes of government, lender and buyer that fuel them.  We do know that the less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs”

On buying businesses
“ I've said many times that when a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.  After many years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them. To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers.”

On Capital allocation
“And, despite the age of the equipment, much of it was functionally similar to new equipment being installed by the industry.  Despite this “bargain cost” of fixed assets, capital turnover was relatively low reflecting required high investment levels in receivables and inventory compared to sales.  Slow capital turnover, coupled with low profit margins on sales, inevitably produces inadequate returns on capital.  Obvious approaches to improved profit margins involve differentiation of product, lowered manufacturing costs through more efficient equipment or better utilization of people, redirection toward fabrics enjoying stronger market trends, etc.  Our management was diligent in pursuing such objectives.  The problem was that our competitors were just as diligently doing the same thing.
     Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions.  When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable.  This is precisely the choice that often faces us since entire businesses (whose earnings will be fully reportable) frequently sell for double the pro-rata price of small portions (whose earnings will be largely unreportable).  In aggregate and over time, we expect the unreported earnings to be fully reflected in our intrinsic business value through capital gains”

On Intelligent Investing
1. that you should look at stocks as part Ownership of a business,

2. that you should look at market fluctuations in terms of his "Mr. Market" example and make them your friend rather than your enemy by essentially profiting from folly rather than participating in it, and finally,

3. the three most important words in investing are "Margin of safety" - which Ben talked about in his last chapter of The Intelligent Investor - always building a 15,000 pound bridge if you're going to be driving 10,000 pound trucks across it.

On Investing strategy
“     Our equity-investing strategy remains little changed from what it was years ago:  "We select our marketable equity securities in much the way we would evaluate a business for acquisition in its entirety.  We want the business to be one (a) that we can understand; (b) with favorable long-term prospects; (c) operated by honest and competent people; and (d) available at a very attractive price."  We have seen cause to make only one change in this creed: Because of both market conditions and our size, we now substitute "an attractive price" for "a very attractive price."
     But how, you will ask, does one decide what's "attractive"?  In answering this question, most analysts feel they must choose between two approaches customarily thought to be in opposition:  
"value" and "growth."  Indeed, many investment professionals see any mixing of the two terms as a form of intellectual cross-dressing.  We view that as fuzzy thinking (in which, it must be confessed, I myself engaged some years ago).  In our opinion, the two approaches are joined at the hip:  Growth is always a component in the calculation of value, constituting a variable whose importance can range from negligible to enormous and whose impact can be negative as well as positive.
     Whether appropriate or not, the term "value investing" is widely used.  Typically, it connotes the purchase of stocks having attributes such as a low ratio of price to book value, a low price-earnings ratio, or a high dividend yield.  Unfortunately, such characteristics, even if they appear in combination, are far from determinative as to whether an investor is indeed buying something for what it is worth and is therefore truly operating on the principle of obtaining value in his investments.  Correspondingly, opposite characteristics - a high ratio of price to book value, a high price-earnings ratio, and a low dividend yield - are in no way inconsistent with a "value" purchase.
     Similarly, business growth, per se, tells us little about value.  It's true that growth often has a positive impact on value, sometimes one of spectacular proportions.  But such an effect is far from certain.  For example, investors have regularly poured money into the domestic airline business to finance profitless (or worse) growth.  For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners.
Growth benefits investors only when the business in point can invest at incremental returns that are enticing - in other words, only when each dollar used to finance the growth creates over a dollar of long-term market value.  In the case of a low-return business requiring incremental funds, growth hurts the investor. “

Buffett, Gates visit UNL

Article on the gates / Buffett visit to University of nebraska. Some excerpts below



By Dick Piersol
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, left, and billionaire investor Warren Buffett participate in a question and answer session with students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Business Administration, Friday, Sept. 30, 2005. (AP)
Lincoln Journal StarAs recollections of Tommy Lee’s visit fade like a cheap tattoo, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln refreshed its celebrity appeal on Friday with an appearance by the goalposts of capitalism.The world’s two richest beings — Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates, a Harvard dropout, and his bridge-playing buddy Warren Buffett, the investment industry’s biggest rocker, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and a UNL grad — communed with business students at the Lied Center.
In a two-hour question-and-answer session to be televised next year by NET, the Nebraska public television network, the wealthiest of America’s good ole boys answered unscripted questions in a relaxed setting for an audience of about 1,800, mostly students from the UNL College of Business Administration.The university warmed up and amused the audience with filmed introductions: TV’s Judge Judy adjudicated a disputed $2 bet between the two moguls she described as “elderly delinquents.” California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran Buffett through enforced calisthenics. And entertainer Jimmy Buffett performed a vocal duet of “Ain’t She Sweet,” with the richer Buffett on ukulele.Then the featured guests got down to business, starting with ethics in business during challenging times, how they enforce their own sense of integrity in their organizations and ranging beyond to a variety of topics.Buffett said he sends a letter every couple of years to 40 or so Berkshire company managers to let them know they can afford to lose money but not their reputation.“I ask them how they would feel about any given action if it were to be written up in the local newspaper by a smart but pretty unfriendly reporter,” Buffett said.Nobody in the friendly audience asked about Berkshire’s latest brushes with the law, for example, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s September notice to Berkshire that the SEC is considering civil charges against Joseph Brandon, chief executive of Berkshire’s General Re, for potential violations of securities law.Questions ranged then to public policy, specifically the income tax, and whether it ought to be flattened.


One student asked what field of work the two might have chosen if they were 20 years old again.Gates answered medical science and biology. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has devoted billions of dollars to solving health problems in developing nations.Buffett chose journalism, and said in a sense, he is a reporter.“I assign myself a story, what is this company worth and why?” he said. Buffett owns a big piece of the Washington Post and told the audience his parents met at the university when his father was editor of the Daily Nebraskan. His mother was the daughter of an editor.

Buffett's 1974 Forbes interview

A classic !!

http://www.maoxian.com/archive/20030108.html

Buffett's comment on telecom industry

The other day i posted a link for a talk which buffett gave in omaha. One of the question was on his opinion of the telecom industry. He said that he cannot predict the future of industry ( said he does not even know the complete history) and the industry has too much change (which is bad for the investor)

This had me thinking and then i came across this article below in economist (link given , i have added on a portion of the article as it could have some copyright issues ). On reading this article, i think one would tend to agree with buffett. It is very difficult to really predict the long term business model of the telecom industry. Today VOIP is the killer app , tomorrow it could be something else ....

http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4232442

Established telecoms companies are fighting an increasingly bitter battle against innovative attackers

That is because IPTV forms part of a larger, and quite desperate, defensive strategy now being adopted by telecoms firms against fierce attacks on multiple fronts. On one front are cable giants, such as America's Comcast, which are luring customers with an enticing “triple-play bundle” of TV, broadband and telephony services. On a second front are mobile-phone operators, which young customers in particular are increasingly using to “cut the cord” from their fixed-line company.

But arguably most dangerous of all is the third front, where traditional telecoms firms are under attack from voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP) providers, which use the internet to carry conversations that would previously have taken place via a conventional phone. TeleGeography, a research firm, estimates that the number of subscribers to VOIP services such as Vonage, which lets users plug their traditional phones into a gadget connected to the internet, will grow from 1.8m at the start of this year to 4m by the end of December in America alone; by 2010, it projects over 17m American subscribers. This does not count the world's largest VOIP provider, Skype, which uses a small and simple software application to let users make free calls between computers—so far, it has been downloaded 141m times.

Hanging on the telephone

Traditional telecoms firms are doing their best to respond to these threats by adopting internet technologies themselves. This week, VSNL, the top operator in India for international calls, said it would buy Teleglobe, the world's largest international wholesale VOIP carrier. Every big telecoms firm is investing to migrate from old, circuit-switched networks to new internet-based ones, with Britain's BT probably moving fastest. The threat from VOIP would then be neutralised, as the telecoms firms themselves would be providing it. Even so, VOIP makes already grim revenue forecasts for old-style telecoms firms look truly depressing (see chart).

Excerpts from warren buffett's 1997 Caltech Speech

Found these excerpts on the fool.com website.

This speech is useful in resovling some question we all have as investors
- how do i accumulate a decent nest egg
- what to focus on when analysing a business (important and knowable)
- how to investigate / research a company


The first section of the speech I have quoted was Mr. Buffett's answer to the moderator's question on how individuals can grow their investment portfolio. I think this is the first time I have heard of him using the snowball analogy.

Mr. Buffett: “The first thing to realize is that it takes a long time. I started when I was eleven. Accumulating money is a little like having a snowball going downhill, it's important to have a very long hill. I've had a fifty-six year hill. It's important to work in sticky snow and you need a little snowball to start with, which I got from delivery the post actually. It's better if you're not in too much of a hurry and keep doing sound things.”

“The biggest thing I've had going for me is that we have never had big loses. I think almost everyone on Wall Street has had winners that were comparable to what we've had at Berkshire Hathaway but we have tended to avoid the losers and we have done that by trying to stick in what I call my circle of competence. I think that is the biggest thing in business, figuring out where you are good and where you are not. It doesn't make any difference how big the circle is the important thing is that you know where the perimeter is. You can have a very small circle but if you stay within that circle you'll do fine. It's like Tom Watson said, “I'm no genius but I'm smart in spots and I stay around those spots.

”“Well that is what I try to do in investments. I try to stick with companies that I can understand. You don't always have huge winners that way but you'll almost never lose any significant money. So come back and see me in 56 years and tell me how it worked.

”The second section of the speech is important because it provides us with an understanding of exactly what ideas of Mr. Graham actually caught the interest of Mr. Buffett. I also find it interesting that another great investment mind besides Mr. Graham found that technical analysis is useless. Another idea that he brings up in this section is how knowledge builds on itself. I think that is especially true for investors that already think of the investment process correctly but could present problems to those that follow technical analysis or believe in the EMT.

Mr. Buffett: “Well, the biggest thing was picking up a book when I was nineteen by Benjamin Graham called the Intelligent Investor. I had been interested in stocks since I was six or seven and I'd charted and done all this technical analysis, it was a lot of fun but it wasn't very profitable. I read the Intelligent Investor and it really had three important ideas in it: Think of a stock as part of a business, don't think of it as some little ticker symbol moving around but think of it as actually buying a piece of a business just like you'd buy a service station or a dry cleaning establishment in your hometown. Instead you're buying one-onehundredth of a percent of General Motors.”“Think of what you understand about the business and how you can value it. If it's one you can't understand then go onto the next one. His second concept of your attitude toward stock market changes is prices so that he said the stock market was there to serve you not to instruct you. So essentially he said that when a stock goes down that is good news if you know what you're doing because it just means that you can buy more of a business that you like even cheaper.

“Finally the concept of a Margin of Safety which he said if you were driving a car or a truck that weighs 9800 pounds and you see a bridge that says limit 10,000 pounds you go look for another bridge that says 20,000 pounds and you only buy securities when you think they are substantially below what you think they are worth. Those concepts all made sense to me.” “Those fundamental principles applied in various ways are the key to it [investing]. I've had an additional advantage in that I have been in both business and in investments so I have actually seen businesses.

”“Owning See's Candies, which we bought in 1972, really taught me a lot about the value of brands and what could be done with them so I understood Coca-Cola better when it came along in 1988 then if I had never been in Sees. We've got a profit of close to $10 billion dollars in Coke now a significant part of that is attributable to the fact that we bought Sees Candy for $25 million dollars in 1972.

”“The nice thing about investments is that knowledge accumulates on you and if you understand a business or industry once you are going to understand it for the next fifty years. There may be whole big areas you don't understand, like technology would be with me) but once you understand candy you understand candy.

”The following quote, in my opinion, is a little plug in favor of focus investing.

Mr. Buffett: “When I miss on a business that I can understand, that I know about, and I don't so something big, doing something small is a great sin in my view. [Those situations] have cost us billions of dollars literally”.

This next answer provides investors with a compelling way to think about investing. His advocating on focusing on the real issues and ignoring the items that don't matter in the overall equation is a great repudiation of the investing theories behind momentum market players.

Mr. Buffett: “Well, if I could do it would eliminate a lot of other problems. I wouldn't have to sit and think about whether Coca-Cola had a decent business or Gillette or something of the sort. It's just that I don't know how to do it and in business you're looking for things that are important and knowable. If they're not important than forget them and if they're not knowable forget them but if they are important they are knowable and then the question is can you find things that are important and knowable? And you can but predicting the market is one that may be important but in my view is not knowable and I don't know anyone who has made large amounts of money by predicting the market. If you can't do it then you don't want to let it interfere with something you can do.

”“Coca-Cola went public in 1919 or 1920 at $40 a share. It went to $19 within the year. It lost over 50% of its value, sugar went up in price and there were some other things. Now if you thought the market was there to instruct you might think this was a terrible business and I'd better get out of it. Or if you thought you saw the Great Depression coming or World War II, or all of these things you could sit there and think about all kinds of things. The important thing was to recognize what Coca-Cola was so if you put $40 dollars or $19 dollars at the start of that year it would be worth about $5 million now. That is what you really want, the big idea that you can understand.

”In the following answer Mr. Buffett explains how investors can use their own circle of competence in the investment process. I think you'll enjoy the investigative reporter analogy.

Mr. Buffett: “Well, it is interesting that you mention reporting because Bob Woodward I think back in 73 or 74 when I first got interested in the post we had lunch at the Madison and he was saying what he might so with his money and I said Bob why don't you assign yourself a story, get up an hour early every morning and work on a story you've assigned yourself. Now a sensible story to assign yourself would be what is the Washington Post Company worth. Now if Bradley gave you that story to work on what would you do for the next week or two? You go around and talk to people at Rand Television stations, Brokered Television Stations [?] bought them, and you would try to figure out what are the key variables in valuing a television station and you would look at the four that the Post has and apply those standards to that.”


“You would do the same thing to newspapers. You would try to figure out how the competitive battle between the Star and the Post was going to come out and how much difference the world would might be if the Post won that war then it was at the present time and what Newsweek. All of these things are a lot easier than the problems Woodward would usually be working on. Usually people wouldn't want to talk to him but on this subject they would be glad to talk to him and then I said when you get all through with that add it up, divide by the number of shares outstanding. All he had to do was assign himself the right story and I assign myself stories from time to time.”

“I may assign myself the story about how Diary Queen works and I can figure that out a lot easier than I can figure out what an Intel is worth. It is reporting. A is getting into fairly simple businesses so there aren't huge numbers of unknowables and then it is going around and talking to suppliers, its talking to competitors, maybe talking to ex-employees.” “One question I would always ask in the past, when I worked harder at this, I would go around and talk to everyone in an industry and say if you had to buy one of your competitors stocks, if you had to go away for ten years and had to buy one of your competitors stocks, which would it be and why? And if you do this enough times, it's like reporting, it starts fitting together. It's not really a complicated proposition.”

The last answer that I he gave in response to a student's question related back to what Mr. Buffett feels is important for investors to take away from the teachings of Mr. Graham.Mr. Buffett: “Graham emphasized the quantitative in buying stocks below working capital and that sort of thing. I don't regard that as the important part of his teaching. I really regard those principles of looking at the stock as a business, the margin of safety and those things so in that respect I'm pure Graham from those building blocks the quantitative parts I have changed some from but Graham wasn't as interested in business as I am actually I mean I find it fun to go in and look at a business and try to determine what makes it tick or not tick and Graham looked at it as something we could do in an office looking at a bunch of numbers and he was very successful but he really believed in the used cigar butt approach to investing.”

Additional Buffett resources

Over the past few years i have gathered a good amount of material such as speeches, articles etc on investing greats such as warren buffett, charlie munger, graham and others.

i have added a new section on the sidebar which will provide links to these useful resources. I am now in the process of adding to the links and would be updating it on a regular basis.

i would be able to share only those resources for which i have a link and it is not copyrighted. For some stuff like buffett's letter to partners, which cannot be shared , I would not be able to post any links.

So stay tuned !!

buffett's lecture at notredame - 1991

found this classic lecture at this link ...enjoy !!

http://www.tilsonfunds.com/BuffettNotreDame.pdf

Buffett's speech to students at univ of Florida

A free link to the video was posted at www.fool.com by a board member. i have put the link below

http://tinyurl.com/c85or
several very interesting comments by buffett

1. why smart people do dumb things - buffett discussed about the LTCM episode. how a bunch of very smart people with very high IQ and knowledge, managed to blow up everything they had. i like the statement - 'why risk what you have and need for what you dont have and dont need' ? i think this statement is very important to an investor. just think about it ...if i am well off , why do i need to risk my networth for a few extra percentage points and if i am poor , i cannot afford to do it. i guess it makes sense to invest conservatively (in companies with strong competitive advantage )

2. buffett discusses at length the economics of coke / see's and p&g. this was in response to a question on what is it he looks in a business. buffett discusses in detail about the what qualitative factors one should look for in a business. One new point which struck me and kept me thinking is buffetts reference to the pricing power of a company. companies with strong pricing power like coke tend to have a very formidable competitive advantage. in comparison commodity companies have poor or no pricing power (except during supply shortage )

3. buffett also discussed about reit investment and how although the discount to book looks enticing , but is justified due to inability of such companies to move / sell the big amount of real estate on their books

4. buffett talks of various other topics (which he has repeated in several other forums) , like developing good habits (example of taking a 10 % option on your classmate ), not prediciting the market etc

5.buffett also talk of the 'important and knowable' v/s 'important and unknowable' , when some one asked his opinion on interest rates. he pointed out that is better to focus on the first and get into good companies than worry about the second and let go of opportunities.

a very good speech and worth the 1.5 hours (in addition it is free)

Buffet's talk at Notre Dame

I recently came across the transcript of a talk which buffet gave at Notre dame. A few gems from the talk (paraphrased )

'You don't want to buy a dollar bill that's sitting for 50 cents, and it demands positive
capital, and its going to be a dollar bill ten years from now. You want a dollar bill that's
going to compound at 12%'

'A couple of fast tests about how good a business is. First question is "how long does the
management have to think before they decide to raise prices?" You're looking at
marvelous business when you look in the mirror and say "mirror mirror on the wall, how
much should I charge for Coke this fall?" That's a great business. When you say, like we
used to in the textile business, when you get down on your knees, you know you call in
all the priests, rabbis, and everyone else, "just another half cent a yard". Then you get up
and they say "We won't pay it". Its just night and day. You KNOW those businesses. I
mean, if you walk into a drugstore, and you say "I'd like a Hershey bar" and the man says
"I don't' have any Hershey bars, but I've got this unmarked chocolate bar, and its a nickel
cheaper than a Hershey bar" you just go across the street and buy a Hershey bar. THAT is
a good business.'

The ability to raise prices; the ability to differentiate yourself in a REAL way, and a REAL way means you can charge a different price, that makes a great business.

I'd like to talk to you for just a few minutes about what I regard as the most important
thing in investments and also in terms of your career. Because in your career what train
you get on makes a lot of difference. Because frequently, perhaps generally, when people
get out of business school, they don't give enough thought to exactly what sort of train
they're going to get on. And it makes a tremendous difference whether you get involved
in a prosperous company; one that's going to really do well. On balance, you want to go
with a company whose stock is going to be a good investment over the years because
there's going to be much more opportunity; there's going to be more money made, you're
going to (garbled). And if you get involved with some of the businesses I've been
involved with like trading stamps

One is a marvelous, absolutely sensational business, the other one is a terrible business. If
you have a choice between going to work for a wonderful business that is not capital
intensive, and one that is capital intensive, I suggest that you look at the one that is not
capital intensive.

I read all kinds of business publications. I read a lot of industry publications. Coming in
today on the plane (garbled). I'll grab whatever comes in the morning. American Banker
comes every day, so I'll read that. I'll read the Wall Street Journal. Obviously. I'll read
Editor and Publisher, I'll read Broadcasting, I'll read Property Casualty Review, I'll read
Jeffrey Meyer's Beverage Digest. I'll read everything. And I own 100 shares of almost
every stock I can think of just so I know I'll get all the reports. And I carry around
prospectuses and proxy material. Don't read broker's reports. You should be very careful
with those.

- In addition buffet goes the economics of various businesses such as coke, gillette, textile and other commodity business

A must read for an investor.