When the stock price gets within our estimated range for intrinsic value, we're sellers. To my mind, capturing a discount to a conservatively estimated intrinsic value is a far easier proposition than betting on the growth of intrinsic value over time. Someone like Warren Buffett, who has an incredible gift for imagining how a company's [...]

MBAs learn all about optimizing capital structures, but I've been quite content sticking with companies that have extra-safe balance sheets. I'll trade return on equity for safety any day.

When I got much more interested in individual securities analysis in the early 1990s I read as widely as I could and a light bulb just switched on when I read everything Marty Whitman wrote. I was thinking it was critical to understand the ins and outs of how the stock market really worked, but [...]