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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cfimx who wrote (5319)	11/22/1998 9:47:00 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78597

Hi Twister. Buffett may have repudiated Graham's methods. But I haven't. -g-. Maybe Buffett is just too big a player to be a value investor in a small pond. I am looking for methods and strategies that work. Graham's methods work. Buffett's do not. Here's how I think about it. If you follow Graham's methods and buy low pe, low book value stocks you will do okay. Take an approach in which the stock/bond allocation fluctuates such that you buy more stocks when they appear low and buy more bonds than stocks when stock prices are high. That's pretty much kinda/sorta what Graham says. And a lot of people have done this and have made money. That's what Graham says to do to help the average Joe/Jane get a 'decent' return. But if someone tries to follow Buffett, they get great wisdom and great quotes, and great one-liners. But they do not get a methodology that they themselves can use to emulate Buffett. That is, the people who I read who are avid Buffett followers, made their money by following Buffett into his stocks or bought Berkshire and held, held, held. They do not and did not make their money by saying, "Oh here's a stock I've come across and it's a perfect Buffett type, so I'll buy it." For example, it seems to me on the Buffett thread there's a bunch of sharp people all looking for Buffett stocks. There's really no consensus and VERY few ideas, let alone recommendations - maybe one company RAL - a possibility. Now granted with Buffett, all you'd need is that one, maybe second company, and hold,hold, hold. But buy price plays a part too. So since 1995, my guess would be that if someone were really a Buffett stock seeker, and only a Buffett stock seeker, (and did not own BKH or KO or just followed Buffett in), then that person would not have bought much since 1995 and would've missed one heck of a chance to make money in the Bull Market (unless that person, like Buffett, had bought before the runnup). I am saying there is only one Buffett/Munger. Trying to emulate them because they sound so smart and are so wealthy from their work... I think that is an exercise in frustration. Their methods don't work for anybody else but them. If they did, then we'd hear more stories of how people id'd stocks using Buffett methods and how successful they've been. Again, I'm looking for methods that work for the average Jane/Joe (me). I can find lots of examples of people who say they've done well finding and buying value stocks. I recall no examples of anyone ever telling me they are successful in particularly focusing on Buffett's methods as a stock selection criteria. (I exclude here some wealthy XRX and WMT people who've said, "yeah, I work at the company and it's a good company and I've bought and held the stock for 30 years. And, so with WMT, we see much later, in '97 or '98 that Buffett buys WMT.) Anyway, just my opinion. If I could easily find a Buffett stock, I'd buy it too -g-. Meanwhile, I'll take value. (Yeah, I know my arguments are a little disjointed here -g-) Paul