Professor Glen Arnold

The Discipline of the Two-minute Monologue: Peter Lynch, a great value investor, expected his staff to be able to be as disciplined as he was, and be able to expound the merits of a company in a ‘two-minute monologue’.  The salient facts about any company should be extracted from the morass of information, then the decision […]

Niche companies are Peter Lynch’s preferred type of value investments. He requires a number of factors to be in his favour before committing: (a) strong economic franchise, (b) owner-oriented managers, (c) a low price, and (d) financial strength. Strong economic franchise Lynch is firmly of the belief that a company is better able to exploit […]

Small aggressively-run companies offering earnings growth of at least 20% per year can be 10- to 40-baggers, and even the 200-baggers, if you can buy them when they are unrecognised by Mr Market and therefore still cheap.  If you get things right in this area, one or two of these can make a career. Niche […]

Experienced value investors often develop a degree of specialisation within the overall school of value investing – still emphasising (a) thorough analysis of the underlying business, (b) margin of safety, (c) looking for reasonable returns not extraordinary, and (d) exploiting the mistakes of Mr Market in his moods, but applying these ideas in different ways. […]

Those of you who have been reading my newsletters for a couple of years will already be familiar with the stories of investment triumph and disaster in the third volume in the series of books on Buffett’s deals – those newsletters are still available to you. However, for anyone who might want a book version, […]

The amateur investor is free from any list of rules that make life so difficult for the professionals and he is able to buy into small and medium-sized firms offering the greatest percentage gains, rather than diversify into poorly understood shares. He/she need only own a few shares; which permits time to understand an industry […]

Recovery shares and others that are currently out-of-favor will produce the best returns because buying them is the opposite of going along with the herd. The stock market takes things to extremes.  Your job, as an investor, is to take advantage these excesses. By spending time looking for recovery shares you are forced to go […]

                    Anthony Bolton is widely acknowledged to be the greatest British investor of his generation. Peter Lynch, the leading American investor, described him as one of the best investors on earth.  He was a contrarian-value investor, who searched for out-of-favor, under-researched shares with potential that others […]

Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, John Templeton and all the other great investors spend(t) a great deal of time trying to understand the social, economic and political dynamics of countries around the world. These must be considered by investors when estimating future earnings and the risk attached to those earnings – bargains cannot be identified without […]

Warren Buffett says that you should be diversified, but not to “mediocrity”. To lower risk it is essential to split your fund between at least five companies and possibly as many as 20, or 25 if you are full-time professional investor. Beyond that you are diversifying outside of your best ideas, the true bargains. Also, […]