Some Mistakes!

(Continuing on the wonderful compilation of Warren Buffett's sayings done by Bud Labitan called "The Warren Buffett Business Factors" but unfortunately the link I had recorded is broken.)

There is this one section which was devoted to Warren Buffett's mistakes! Now think about it... if the great legendary investor acknowledges and admits to his mistakes... what about us, the average mistakes? Aren't we but normal buggers who are even more likely to make investing mistakes? How?

Some Mistakes

To quote Robert Benchley, "Having a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down." Such are the shortcomings of experience. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones. So let's take a quick look at the past.

==> Review the past before committing new ones! Do we want to be repeating the same mistakes over and over again?

If a man didn't make mistakes he'd own the world in a month. But if he didn't profit by his mistakes he wouldn't own a blessed thing. - - Edwin Lefevre - Reminiscenes of a Stock Operator.

My first mistake was in buying control of Berkshire. Though I knew its business – textile manufacturing - to be unpromising, I was enticed to buy because the price looked cheap. Stock purchases of that kind had proved reasonably rewarding in my early years, though by the time Berkshire came along in 1965 I was becoming aware that the strategy was not ideal.

==> Hmmm....The folly of buying a stock solely because of the price factor!

If you buy a stock at a sufficiently low price, there will usually be some hiccup in the fortunes of the business that gives you a chance to unload at a decent profit, even though the long-term performance of the business may be terrible. I call this the "cigar butt" approach to investing. A cigar butt found on the street that has only one puff left in it may not offer much of a smoke, but the "bargain purchase" will make that puff all profit.

Unless you are a liquidator, that kind of approach to buying businesses is foolish.

First, the original "bargain" price probably will not turn out to be such a steal after all. In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen.

==> how true? In a bad business, the problems, the bad lucks, they are usually endless! Yes?

Second, any initial advantage you secure will be quickly eroded by the low return that the business earns. For example, if you buy a business for $8 million that can be sold or liquidated for $10 million and promptly take either course, you can realize a high return. The investment will disappoint if the business is sold for $10 million in ten years and in the interim has annually earned and distributed only a few percent on cost. Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.

==> Ahh also refer to The Terrible Business

I could give you other personal examples of "bargain-purchase" folly but I'm sure you get the picture: It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. Charlie understood this early; I was a slow learner. Now, when buying companies or common stocks, we look for first-class businesses accompanied by first-class managements.

That leads right into a related lesson:

Good jockeys will do well on good horses, but not on broken-down nags. Both Berkshire's textile business and Hochschild, Kohn had able and honest people running them. The same managers employed in a business with good economic characteristics would have achieved fine records. But they were never going to make any progress while running in quicksand.

==> Ahh.. when the business economics of a business is lousy, it does not matter which 5-star manager is running and managing the business?!

I've said many times that when a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. After many years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems.

What we have learned is to avoid them.

To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers.

The finding may seem unfair, but in both business and investments, it is usually far more profitable to simply stick with the easy and obvious than it is to resolve the difficult.

On occasion, tough problems must be tackled as was the case when we started our Sunday paper in Buffalo.

In other instances, a great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable, problem as was the case many years back at both American Express and GEICO. Overall, however, we've done better by avoiding dragons than by slaying them.

==> The very last line.. Warren reckons it's much better avoiding dragons than by slaying them!!!