RandomBlog2011 | wealthymatters

Why it’s better to invest in stocks rather than buy a business

March 6, 2011 Leave a comment

The following is a repetition of material found here https://wealthymatters.com/2011/03/06/the-dhandho-investor/ . But I think the material is significant enough to bear repetition.This is a list of reasons why a Dhandho Investor who wants High Returns but Low Risk should prefer to buy stocks rather than businesses.

I am rather indiscriminate when it comes to businesses.I would rather make money from a whole bunch of businesses rather than content myself with one source.And as the Indian economy explodes and money is made in so many different ways it’s so hard to pick just a few businesses to focus on or to put money in.The list below is my way of consoling myself for all the businesses I will never own.

With an entire business, you have to run it, or find someone who can. To be successful, this requires an enormous amount of dedication.
In the stock market, you’re buying a business that is already staffed, yet you still get to share in the earnings.
With whole businesses, often the sellers know a lot more about the business than the buyers, and furthermore the prices offered are not usually as attractive as they can be in the stock market. Read more of this post

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Advice on Buying a Business

March 6, 2011 Leave a comment

This is a repetition of material from the last post.I just think the matter is important enough to merit a post by itself.This is Mohnish Pabrai’s list of to-dos when buying a business.By paying attention to the following 9 principles of the Dhandho Framework you ensure that you bear the least risk and have the highest chance of a big pay-off.Of course, buying shares is buying parts of a business so you can apply the same criteria to come out ahead.

Buy an existing business: you get a defined business model and have to invent nothing new.
Buy businesses in simple industries with a low rate of change: buy businesses that are necessary and not about to be replaced any time soon.
Buy distressed businesses in distressed industries: the very best time to buy a business is when it is hated and unloved.
Buy businesses with a durable competitive advantage: this advantage can come from being low-cost to having a brand to having captive customers.
Bet heavily when the odds are in your favour: if you must, wait for several years till the right opportunity comes by, then invest big-time.
Focus on arbitrage: exploit any discrepancy between price and value.
Buy businesses at big discounts to their intrinsic values: the odds of a permanent loss are low when this approach is followed.
Look for low-risk, high-uncertainty businesses: the uncertainty leads to severely depressed prices.
It’s better to be a copycat than an innovator: “innovation is a crapshoot, but scaling carries far lower risk.”

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The Dhandho Investor

March 6, 2011 4 Comments

This book is pretty small – just a little over 200 pages.And I love it.I am naturally a bargain hunter and love shopping in sales.I also love getting high quality goods at bargain-basement prices.So It’s small wonder that I am attracted to value investing.The danger of shopping in sales is that a person picks up things they don’t have any use for or items that are not a perfect fit just because they are cheap.Then there is a danger of buying poor quality stuff just because it seems to cost so little.The same applies to buying stocks cheap.Sometimes the whole market is beaten down and all stocks seem cheap, but if I buy stocks of companies I would not normally buy because of their poor returns to investors,just because they are cheap,I am left with the problem of selling them when the market and the stock recovers.This is a problem for me personally as I have a tendency to get married to my stocks.At other times a stock sells for low P/E multiples simply because there is something fundamentally wrong with the company. Stocking up on the shares and hoping for a turn-around is pretty foolish.But I am an optimistic type and I need to force myself to turn away from such situations.Over a period of time I have found ways to control my habits.When the markets are down,I first establish a budget and then try to make a list of likely stocks and arrange them in order of attractiveness depending on Buffett-style criteria and tell myself that I’m to invest over 80% of the budget on only the top 5 of my list.I find this stops me from stocking up on not so great businesses that I might find hard to sell later.Then I have accepted the fact that I am a speculator at heart.I no longer try to fight the urge but try to use the Dhandho Principles that come pretty naturally to me to gain out of my speculative tendencies.This is a book I recommend for all investors like me who like value investing but can’t overcome the urge to speculate.

Here is a round up chapter-wise of what is found in the book:-

Chapter 1

Pabrai starts the book by discussing the term “dhandho“which is a Gujarati word meaning “business”. Gujarat is a western coastal state in India that has served as a hotbed for trade with Asia and Africa. The Patels are a community of particularly entrepreunerial Gujaratis whose entrepreneurial ventures led to them forming a dominant part of the East African economy by the early 1970s. When Asians were thrown out of Uganda in 1972 on the basis of their race, a flurry of Patel immigrants landed in Canada, England and the United States. Read more of this post

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Mohnish Pabrai

March 6, 2011 1 Comment

Mohnish Pabrai is an Indian-American businessman and deep value investor.He is the managing partner of the Pabrai Investment Funds, which he founded in 1999.He is also a member of the Young President’s Organization (YPO) and a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE).

Monhnish Pabrai first trained as a computer engineer. He then spent nearly two decades in the tech field.In 1990, he quit his job working as an engineer for Tellabs in Chicago and abandoned his master’s thesis at the Illinois Institute of Technology to launch TransTech, an IT consulting and systems integration company, which he funded with $30,000 from his retirement account and $70,000 from credit cards.His father encouraged him in the endeavour,saying that it was the right thing to do as staying at Tellabs and following the staid boring corporate path was high risk. Starting a business on the other hand was low risk, could give high returns and high adventure. As Monaish was single at the time there were few complications and in the worst case, he would lose everything ,which wasn’t much anyway,and could declare personal bankruptcy and start over. By 1999, Transtech, which had grown to 200 employees and $30 million in revenues, held no thrill. So he sold it. And during the tech boom,he started another company, internet incubator Digital Disrupters, which had a very painful and swift demise due the tightening of capital markets .In 2000, he sold TransTech to Kurt Salmon Associates.During late 1999, with nine other investors contributing $100,000 each,Mohnish started Pabrai Funds with $1,000,000 in assets. Pabrai Funds was modelled on the original “Buffett Partnership.” Read more of this post

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On Why Money Management Is a Great Business

March 4, 2011 1 Comment

Using the checklist found here at https://wealthymatters.com/2011/03/01/the-perfect-business/ it’s easy to see why money management is a great business to be in:

1.High profitability. Costs are low .It is possible to operate a money management business out of your home and it’s possible to manage with very few employees.Plus the fees are guranteed and high.

2.High returns on capital. It costs almost nothing to get into the money management business, growth requires little capital, and there’s virtually no cap ex.

3.An enormous moat. In this area, money management businesses don’t look so attractive, as there are almost no barriers to entry. On the other hand, a talented money manager is very rare and having one onboard vastly improves the competitive position of any money management business.