LASER HAIR REMOVAL EDUCATION BOSTON

If you try to build an intellectual edifice based on principles such as high returns on equity, strong consumer franchises, low price-to-earnings ratios, low enterprise value-to-EBIT ratios, high free cash flow margins, and rock solid balance sheets – you will fail.

The entire structure will collapse, leaving the architect disillusioned. Why? Because the items listed above are desirable attributes – nothing more and nothing less. They are not true principles. Even as rules of thumb, they are badly flawed. Ultimately, investment decisions are not made about general classes; they are made about special cases.

Every investment decision requires good judgment and sound reasoning. You need to start with the correct principles. But, principles alone are not enough. You aren’t being asked what the law is, you’re being told to apply the law to the case before you.

This is where a lot of people start to feel overwhelmed. Having learned that investing is not simply a matter of running down a checklist, they don’t know where to begin.

The answer is to start with what you know best. Begin with your most strongly held beliefs. Subject them to honest scrutiny. Then, and only then, apply them to the case at hand.

• Do you believe the concept of intrinsic value is a valid one? Do you believe it is a useful model? If so, then begin there. What does the concept of intrinsic value really mean? What conclusions follow from this belief?
• In the case of intrinsic value, the most difficult conclusion you’ll have to grapple with is the idea that you can pay too much for a great business. For some, this is a relatively simple conflict to resolve. For whatever reason, they prefer cheap merchandise to quality merchandise.
• For others, the conflict between intrinsic value and investing in great businesses is painfully difficult to resolve. But, if you are ever going to have confidence in your judgments, you have to be willing to submit your investment beliefs to honest scrutiny. You have to be your own prosecutor. You have to present the evidence against your thesis.

If you aren’t willing to do that, you’ll end up questioning the investment beliefs you do hold every time you underperform the market. Many proven investment techniques have lagged the market over short periods of time. Occasionally, the performance gap has been very wide. Regardless of whether you adopt a primarily qualitative or primarily quantitative approach to investing, this short-term underperformance is unavoidable.

• It’s avoidable in the sense that a good investor can get lucky and not suffer a down year for a decade or so. Likewise, it’s possible to outperform an index year after year – if you’re lucky. But, it isn’t possible to adopt a strategy that guarantees such outperformance.
• The best you can do is adopt a strategy that offers the right odds. A series of investment operations undertaken in accordance with such a strategy will not guarantee favorable outcomes in every case, but it should provide satisfactory results over the long-term.