Saturday, 12 September 2009

Secrets Of Warren Buffett

By Mike Swanson

If you want to look at an extremely successful stock picks strategy, you would be remiss to overlook the Warren Buffett strategy. The philosophy he uses is known as value investment and this comes from the school of Benjamin Graham. When he invested in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 it cost him $10,000. This investment is worth $30 million today. Had he invested this money in the S & P 500, it would be worth the considerable sum of $500,000, however half a million is nothing compared to thirty million!

This legendary investor who has his head screwed on right has become a myth in his lifetime. He is something of a bargain hunter and he pursues bargains as part of his value investment philosophy, which sees him buying stocks that other investors overlook. It is as though he can see something in under-valued stocks that other people don't see.

Securities with low intrinsic worth are grist for his mill. He identifies these and predicts their worth by analyzing the company's fundamentals. The majority of buyers are unable to predict this and Warren Buffett seems to know that the market will eventually favor his investments.

Supply and demand do not concern him in the least, although traditionally this is what controls a market. Warren Buffett wants long term returns not capital gains. His famous quote "In the short term the market is a popularity contest; in he long term it is a weighing machine" says it all.

Warren Buffett chooses stocks based on the overall potential of a company to make money as a long term prospect. Capital gain is not what he seeks and all the concerns he has are based on whether or not the company he targets is able to make money.

There are a number of questions he asks himself when evaluating the relationship between the price and the level of excellence of a stock. These include but are not limited to the return on equity in terms of performance, whether the business avoids excess debt, if the profit margins are high and are they increasing, how long it has been a public company and whether the company relies on a commodity for its products.

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