Commentary on a June 23rd article in the WSJ.

Our industry loves to quantify and categorize. It’s not that easy in real life. Our presentation talks about a “multi-variate” approach because industries are different, company life-cycles are different, accounting presentation is different, and sometimes truly bizarre off-spreadsheet events can help or pulverize quantitative attempts. Careful qualitative thinking helps. A respect for history and a proper consideration of “baseline” math helps, as the world seems to talk disruption a lot more than seems to actually happen when the sun rises for many industries. Building in a margin of safety for the possibility we might be terribly wrong.

In the end, you get what you pay for. We are happy to underwrite “Graham” investments where a reasonable business is simply priced ridiculously cheap. And we are willing to pay more for the “Buffett” value. It’s the same seesaw balance of analysis.

And patience. Who knows…maybe I will wear that closet full of ties one day…or own Snowflake.

And building in a margin of safety in the valuation exercise for the non-zero probability we could be wrong.