Monday, April 22, 2013

Notes from the Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville by Warren E. Buffett


 Investor 1:   Walter J. Schloss


Education:   Never went to college.  He took a night course from Ben Graham at the New York Institute of Finance.


Method:       Looks up the numbers and reads the annual reports.  He focuses on the ‘margin of safety’.  He is enormously diversified, owning well over 100 stocks.  He ignores all the externals and simply says that if a business is worth a dollar and he can buy it for 40 cents then something good may happen to him.  He is far less interested in the underlying business than Warren Buffett.


Character:    Independent thinker.  No one can exert influence on his investment ideas.


Record:       S&P 28 ¼ year compounded gain                                        887.2%

                   WJS Limited Partners 28 ¼ year compounded gain            6,678.8%

                   WJS Partnership 28 ¼ year compounded gain                  23,104.7%

                   S&P 28 ¼ year annual compounded rate                                   8.4%

                   WJS Limited Partners 28 ¼ year compounded rate                  16.1%

                   WJS Partnership 28 ¼ year annual compounded rate                         21.3%



Investor 2:   Tom Knapp


Education:   He was chemistry major at Princeton.  He then took a non-credit night course in investments from David Dodd at Columbia.  This interested him so much that he enrolled in the Columbia MBA course and took investment courses from Dodd and Graham.


Method:       Formed Tweedy, Browne Partners with Ed Anderson and bought a wide variety of businesses.  They bought full control of businesses as well as making passive investments.


Record:       S&P total return for a 15 ¾ year period                                  238.5%

                   TBK total return for a 15 ¾ year period                               1,661.2%

                   TBK Limited Partners total return for a 15 ¾ year period      936.4%

                   S&P 15 ¾ year annual compounded rate                                  7.0%

                   TBK 15 ¾ year annual compounded rate                                20.0%

                   TBK Limited Partners 15 ¾ year annual compounded rate       16.0%



Investor 3:   Warren E. Buffett - Buffett Partnership, Ltd.


Education:   Warren attended the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania for three years.  He then transferred to the University of Nebraska. There he read Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.[1]


He obtained a Master's degree in economics in 1951 at Columbia University, studying under Benjamin Graham, alongside other future value investors including Walter Schloss and Irving Kahn.[2]


Method:[3]      Something he can understand.  He looks for something in his “circle of competence”.

He doesn’t understand what Car Company, software or chemical company will win 10 years from now.  But he does understand that Snicker’s Bar will be the number one candy bar in the U.S. just as it has been for the last 40 years.


Durable Competitive Advantage


A business that will dominate for what appears to be forever.


An Honest and Able management.

A price that he wants to pay.


Record:       Dow cumulative return 1957 – 1969                           152.6%

                   Partnership cumulative return 1957 – 1969              2,794.9%

                   Limited Partners cumulative return 1957 – 1969       1,502.7%

                   Dow annual compounded rate 1957 – 1969                    7.4%

                   Partnership compounded rate 1957 – 1969                   29.5%

                   Limited Partners compounded rate 1957 – 1969            23.8%

                            

         


Investor 4:   Bill Ruane, Sequoia Fund


Education:   Harvard Business School.  He then took Graham’s investment class at Columbia.  Buffett asked him to manage his partner’s money when he was closing the Buffett Partnership in 1969. 


Method:       Selects securities based on discrepancies between price and value.

                   Ruane is a focus investor with 90% of the funds portfolio in less than 30 stocks.


Record:       S&P 500 total return 1970 – 1984                                    270.0%

                   Sequoia total return 1970 – 1984                                      775.3%

                   S&P 500 compound annual return 1970 – 1984                  10.0%

                   Sequoia compound annual return 1970 – 1984                    17.2%



Investor 5:   Charlie Munger


Education:   Harvard Law.  Munger was convinced by Buffett to become a value investor.


Method:       Munger uses a discount-from-value approach and his portfolio is very concentrated in few securities.  The high concentration lends to a very volatile record.


Record:       Dow total return 1962 – 1975                                               96.8%

                   Partnership total return 1962 – 1975                                 1156.7%

                   Limited Partners total return 1962 – 1975                            500.1%

                   Dow average annual compounded rate 1962 – 1975                5.0%

                   Partnership average annual compounded rate 1962 – 1975     19.8%

                   Limited Partners avg. ann. compounded rate 1962 – 1975     13.7%



Investor 6:   Rick Guerin, Pacific Partners


Education:   He was a math major at USC.  Munger convinced him that investing was the career for him. 


Method:       Discount-from-value approach


Record:       S&P 19 year (1965 – 1983) compounded gain                       316.4%

                   Limited Partners 19 year compounded gain                        5,530.2%

                   Partnership 19 year compounded gain                    22,200.0%

                   S&P 19 year annual compounded rate                             7.8%

                   Limited Partners 19 year annual compounded rate                    23.6%

                   Partnership 19 year annual compounded rate                           32.9%



Investor 7:   Stan Perlmeter, Perlmeter Investments


Education:   He was liberal arts major at the University of Michigan.  He had advertising agency in the same building as Buffett’s partnership.  After discussing the value approach with Buffett he quit advertising and started a partnership.


Method:       Discount-from-value approach


Record:       Total Partnership percentage gain 8/1/65 – 10/31/83                   4,277.2%

                   Limited Partners percentage gain 8/1/65 – 10/31/83           2,309.5%

                   Annual compound rate of gain Partnership                            23.0%

                   Annual compound rate of gain Limited Partners                     19.0%

                   Annual compound rate of gain Dow Jones Industrials              7.0%


Investor 8:   Washington Post Company, Master Trust


Investor 9:   FMC Corporation Pension Fund



[1] From wikipedia.org
[2]  see footnote 1
[3] From CNBC special, “The Billionaire Next Door”, 2007


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