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What stocks will Warren Buffet be looking to buy once the fear sets in? How does one evaluate value the way he does?

nikanj 9y ago
The ones that have a business model your grandad would understand. His heuristic is somewhat naive, but he's made a lot of money by betting against the paradigm shifts and capitalistic innovations. He's basically applying systems theories to companies, and knows that the more complex a system is, the more possible failure states it has.
- melling 9y ago
  I’m looking for a heuristic. He’ll be staying in his “Circle or Competence”, great company, evaluating companies for their “margin of safety”? He’s only looking at a handful of numbers to determine a good buy. We really should try to learn from this market movement. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger offer decades of knowledge and wisdom.
davidw 9y ago
I think at this point he's able to simply buy up a lot of companies, which is an option not available to normal people.
jacques_chester 9y ago
> What stocks will Warren Buffet be looking to buy once the fear sets in? Whatever's a good deal when the prices drop low enough. > How does one evaluate value the way he does? It's not difficult, he and Munger consistently refer to a handful of books and themes and repeat them over and over. They do have advantages that you and I don't, however. First: they have a captive source of cheap cash in their insurance businesses. They are run strictly for underwriting profit, meaning there is always cheap float on hand to invest. Second: they don't participate in the open market a lot of the time. A lot of the B-H stable is composed of successful private businesses who sold directly, rather than being purchased via the share market. Buffet & Menger can more or less let the deals-of-a-century come to them. Third: if there's nothing good to buy, they don't. They accumulate cash and near-cash assets. This means that when the market tanks, they are one of the few groups with cash on hand to snap up bargains. This happened in a big way during 2007 and 2008.

The ones that have a business model your grandad would understand. His heuristic is somewhat naive, but he's made a lot of money by betting against the paradigm shifts and capitalistic innovations. He's basically applying systems theories to companies, and knows that the more complex a system is, the more possible failure states it has.

melling 9y ago
I’m looking for a heuristic. He’ll be staying in his “Circle or Competence”, great company, evaluating companies for their “margin of safety”? He’s only looking at a handful of numbers to determine a good buy. We really should try to learn from this market movement. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger offer decades of knowledge and wisdom.

davidw 9y ago

I think at this point he's able to simply buy up a lot of companies, which is an option not available to normal people.

jacques_chester 9y ago

> What stocks will Warren Buffet be looking to buy once the fear sets in? Whatever's a good deal when the prices drop low enough. > How does one evaluate value the way he does? It's not difficult, he and Munger consistently refer to a handful of books and themes and repeat them over and over. They do have advantages that you and I don't, however. First: they have a captive source of cheap cash in their insurance businesses. They are run strictly for underwriting profit, meaning there is always cheap float on hand to invest. Second: they don't participate in the open market a lot of the time. A lot of the B-H stable is composed of successful private businesses who sold directly, rather than being purchased via the share market. Buffet & Menger can more or less let the deals-of-a-century come to them. Third: if there's nothing good to buy, they don't. They accumulate cash and near-cash assets. This means that when the market tanks, they are one of the few groups with cash on hand to snap up bargains. This happened in a big way during 2007 and 2008.