Value Investing Strategy
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Do you that Warren Buffet was the only student ever to earn A+ in Benjamin Graham’s class?
Despite that, Warren Buffet still has to persuade Benjamin Graham to get place in Graham Partnership. And amazingly, Buffet’s portfolio grew 1328% in just 7 years!
So, what exactly made Warren Buffet so powerful after working for Benjamin Graham?
Read on to discover what Buffet learnt from Graham while working in Graham Partnership.
Buy Great and Proven Companies
Graham research stock’s profitability from its annual report. He focused on balance sheet and income statement to decide if the stock is worth investing. Earnings per share growth rate (EPSGR) and return on equity (ROE) are some of the important key financial ratios used to investigate the stock.
Buffet loves facts and figures as much as Graham does but soon he discovered something that is equally important. To him, integrating the profitability figure with company’s management efficiency is the perfect combination. Since then he paid more attention on how the company worked, what is the business model and how the company makes money.
That is why he owned great companies like Coca Cola, American Express and Gillette.
Go Shopping When Stock is on Sale
Both Graham and Buffet agreed that buying great companies is not good enough. In order to be profitable, they had to buy the stocks at great discount. At this juncture, Graham had decided to study how much is the business worth. Graham used discounted cash flow model (DCF) to calculate intrinsic value and buy the stock if the price is lower than its margin of safety.