A couple of weekends ago, I was at Marina Bay Sands for the Asian Value Investing Conference. The conference had a lineup of value investing speakers, with Mary Buffett as the keynote speaker.
Other speakers include Seah Sean and Cayden Chang (Mind Kinesis Value Investing Academy), Anthony Hoe (Senior Fund Manager of Phillip GEMS Managed Accounts), Anson Chow (Deutsche Bank) and Wong Hur Ming (Deutsche Asset Management).
Mary Buffett is actually the (ex) daughter-in-law of Warren Buffett, and has published a number of books on investing.
After a short introduction by Asa Soo from Phillip Capital, Mary Buffett took the stage.
It was the first time i was listening to Mary Buffett, and to be honest, I was actually quite disappointed with this particular segment. She was reading from a prepared script (for 30 minutes), and it was nowhere as stimulating as the delivery of Jim Rogers the previous week.
Mary spoke about some aspects of value investing and also what Warren Buffett has done or will do. The other segments were better as they involved some interaction. Rather than summarizing each speaker’s portion, I will just try to list out all the points that I can remember below:
- Value investing is about buying shares whose prices are under-valued. This could be a discount over the book value or intrinsic value.
- You can’t make a good deal with a bad guy. If you really have to make a deal, get your money upfront.
- It is easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble.
- Invest in yourself.
- Know what to buy. Look for companies with durable competitive advantage with consistent long term track record (steadily increasing earnings over 10 years).
- Know when to buy it. Wait to buy it at the right price. Have patience (This is probably the hardest thing to do for most investors).
- Time to sell an excellent business is never.
- Investment rule #1 – Don’t lose money. Investment rule #2 – Remember rule #1.
- Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
- Know your own circle of competence, and stay inside it!
Ten Ways to Get Rich (from Mary Buffett)
- Reinvest your profits
- Be willing to be different – to be above average you need to measure yourself by your inner scorecard
- Never suck your thumb – swiftly make up your mind and act on it
- Spell out the deal before you start – bargaining leverage is always biggest before you begin your job – even with friends or relatives
- Watch small expenses
- Limit what you borrow – leverage can kill
- Be persistent – with tenacity and ingenuity, you can win against a more established competitor
- Know when to quit – know when to walk away from a loss, don’t let anxiety fool you into thinking you can try again
- Assess the risk
- Know what success really means – measure your success in life by how many people that loves you
The Q and A segment was not very eventful, with the panel answering questions that were submitted earlier. Sean seemed to enjoy himself answering the questions, and Mary even managed to skip answering a couple of questions by saying “I agree with Sean” after Sean had given a lengthy reply.
They did had time to take one live question from the audience, and as you would have expected, it was the standard question of “What should we buy now?”
Actually, I feel that the best place to learn about Warren Buffett’s investing methods is to read his annual letter to his shareholders, which you can download for free here:
Warran Buffett Annual Letter to Shareholders
Warren writes in a style that is very candid, and if you have not read them before, you should really go and have a look. And everything is available free – you don’t need to pay a couple of thousand dollars to Warren Buffett to learn about his methods. 🙂
I did spend a couple of years trying to summarize all his letters. I stopped at the year 2000, and you can find a collection of my summary here:
That site has not been updated for a while, so you might need a while to navigate through all the posts. Hope you find the materials there useful. Happy reading!