Bill Miller

Bill Miller

Born:	Laurinburg, North Carolina, in 1950
Affiliations:	J.E. Baker Company Legg Mason Capital Management Santa Fe Institute.
Most Famous For:	Bill Miller is the portfolio manager for the Legg Mason Value Trust (LMVTX) fund, which, under his management, recorded one of the longest "winning streaks" in mutual fund history. Between 1991 and 2005, the fund\'s total return beat the S&P 500 Index for 15 consecutive years. Miller\'s fund grew from $750 million in 1990 to more than $20 billion in 2006.

Personal Profile

Miller graduated from Washington & Lee University in 1972 with a degree in economics. He went to work for the J. E. Baker Co. and became its treasurer. He joined Legg Mason in 1981 and in 2007, was working a chairman and chief investment officer of Legg Mason Capital Management. 

He also serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the Santa Fe Institute, a leading center for multidisciplinary research in complex systems theory.

Investment Style

In November of 2006, Fortune Magazine's managing editor, Andy Serwer, characterized Bill Miller's investing style as iconoclastic: "You simply can't do what he's done in the supremely competitive, ultra-efficient world of stock picking by following the pack …The fact is that Miller has spent decades studying freethinking overachievers, and along the way he's become one himself." 

Bill Miller is a self-described value investor, but his definition of value investing is somewhat disconcerting to some traditional value investors. Miller believes that any stock can be a value stock if it trades at a discount to its intrinsic value.

Individual investors can learn from Miller's application of this investing principle, which, he says, was the basis for the 15-year benchmark-beating record of the Legg Mason Value Trust fund.

He attributes two factors to this success: exhaustive security analysis and portfolio construction. In his 2006, fourth-quarter letter to the shareholders for Value Trust, Bill Miller explains how these two factors work:

Value investing means really asking what are the best values, and not assuming that because something looks expensive that it is, or assuming that because a stock is down in price and trades at low multiples that it is a bargain … Sometimes growth is cheap and value expensive. . . . The question is not growth or value, but where is the best value … We construct portfolios by using ‘factor diversification.' . . . We own a mix of companies whose fundamental valuation factors differ. We have high P/E and low P/E, high price-to-book and low-price-to-book. Most investors tend to be relatively undiversified with respect to these valuation factors, with traditional value investors clustered in low valuations, and growth investors in high valuations … It was in the mid-1990s that we began to create portfolios that had greater factor diversification, which became our strength …We own low PE and we own high PE, but we own them for the same reason: we think they are mispriced. We differ from many value investors in being willing to analyze stocks that look expensive to see if they really are. Most, in fact, are, but some are not. To the extent we get that right, we will benefit shareholders and clients.

Publications 

• "The Man Who Beats The S&P: Investing With Bill Miller" by Janet Lowe (2002)

Quotes

"I often remind our analysts that 100% of the information you have about a company represents the past, and 100% of a stock's valuation depends on the future."

"The market does reflect the available information, as the professors tell us. But just as the funhouse mirrors don't always accurately reflect your weight, the markets don't always accurately reflect that information. Usually they are too pessimistic when it's bad, and too optimistic when it's good."

"What we try to do is take advantage of errors others make, usually because they are too short-term oriented, or they react to dramatic events, or they overestimate the impact of events, and so on."

Peter Lynch

Peter Lynch

Born:	Newton, Massachusetts, in 1944.
Affiliations:	Fidelity Investments, Inc. Fidelity Management & Research Company
Most Famous For:	Peter Lynch managed the Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, during which time the fund\'s assets grew from $20 million to $14 billion. More importantly, Lynch reportedly beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark in 11 of those 13 years, achieving an annual average return of 29%. He is also famous for several books including, "One Up On Wall Street" (1989) and "Beating The Street" (1993), which are widely considered to be mandatory reading for any investor.

Personal Profile

Lynch graduated from Boston College in 1965 with a degree in finance. He served two years in the military before attending and graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a Master of Business Administration in 1968. 

He went to work for Fidelity Investments as an investment analyst, eventually becoming the firm's director of research, a position he held from 1974 to 1977. Lynch was named manager of the little known Magellan Fund in 1977 and achieved historic portfolio results in the ensuing years until his retirement in 1990. 

In 2007, Peter Lynch was serving as vice-chairman of Fidelity's investment adviser, Fidelity Management & Research Co. Since his retirement, he has been an active participant in a variety of philanthropic endeavors. 

Investment Style

Often described as a "chameleon," Peter Lynch adapted to whatever investment style worked at the time. It is said that his work schedule, the equivalent of what we would call today "24/7," did not have a beginning and an end. He talked to company executives, investment managers, industry experts and analysts around the clock. 

Apart from this punishing work ethic, Lynch did consistently apply a set of eight fundamental principles to his stock selection process. According to an article by Kaushal Majmudar, a CFA at The Ridgewood Group, Lynch shares his checklist with the audience at an investment conference in New York in 2005:

• Know what you own.
• It's futile to predict the economy and interest rates.
• You have plenty of time to identify and recognize exceptional companies.
• Avoid long shots.
• Good management is very important - buy good businesses.
• Be flexible and humble, and learn from mistakes.
• Before you make a purchase, you should be able to explain why you're buying.
• There's always something to worry about.

In picking stocks (good companies), Peter Lynch stuck to what he knew and/or could easily understand. That was a core position for him. He also dedicated himself to a level of due diligence and stock research that left few stones unturned. He shut out market noise and concentrated on a company's fundamentals, using a bottom-up approach. He only invested for the long run and paid little attention to short-term market fluctuations. 

Publications

• "One Up On Wall Street" by Peter Lynch with John Rothchild (1989)
• "Beating The Street"Peter Lynch with John Rothchild (1993)
• "Learn To Earn"Peter Lynch with John Rothchild (1996)

Quotes

"Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later, any idiot is probably going to run it."

"If you stay half-alert, you can pick the spectacular performers right from your place of business or out of the neighborhood shopping mall, and long before Wall Street discovers them."

"Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards."

"Absent a lot of surprises, stocks are relatively predictable over twenty years. As to whether they're going to be higher or lower in two to three years, you might as well flip a coin to decide."

"If you spend more than 13 minutes analyzing economic and market forecasts, you've wasted 10 minutes."

Jesse L. Livermore

Jesse L. Livermore

Born:	South Acton, Massachusetts, in 1877; Died in 1940
Affiliations:	Individual investor
Most Famous For:	Jesse Livermore was a highly visible stock trader and speculator for almost fifty years. He was famous for making and losing several multimillion dollar fortunes during his professional career.

Personal Profile

In his early teens, Livermore left home to escape a life of farming. He went to Boston and started his long career in stock trading by posting stock quotes for the Paine Webber brokerage firm. 

He then began trading for himself and by the age of fifteen, he had reportedly produced gains of over $1,000, which was big money in those days. Over the next several years, he made money betting against the so-called "bucket shops," which didn't handle legitimate trades – customers bet against the house on stock price movements.

He did so well that he was banned from all of the shops in Boston, which prompted his move, at age 20, to New York where his speculative trading successes - and failures - made him a celebrity on Wall Street and around the world. His financial ups and downs finally ended tragically with his suicide death at the age of 63. 

Investment Style

Jesse Livermore had no formal education or stock trading experience. He was a self-made man who learned from his winners as well as his losers. It was these successes and failures that helped cement trading ideas that can still be found throughout the market today.

Some of the major principles that he employed include:

• Money is not made in day trading on price fluctuations. Livermore emphasized the importance of focusing on markets as a whole, rather than on individual stocks. He noted that greater success comes from determining the direction of the overall market than attempting to pick the direction of an individual stock without concern for market direction.
• Adopt a buy-and-hold strategy in a bull market and sell when it loses momentum. Livermorealways had an exit strategy in place. 
• Study the fundamentals of a company, the market and the economy. Livermore separated successful investors from unsuccessful investors by the level of effort they put into investing.
• Investors who focus on the short term eventually lose their capital.
• Ignore insider information; make your own independent analysis. Livermore was very careful about where he got his information and recommended using multiple sources. 
• Embrace change in adapting investing strategies to evolving market conditions.

Publications 

• "How to Trade in Stocks"by Jesse Livermore (1940)
• "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre (1923)
• "Jesse Livermore – Speculator King" by Paul Sarnoff (1985).
• "Trade Like Jesse Livermore" by Richard Smitten(2004).

Quotes

"Profits always take care of themselves but losses never do."

"The average man doesn't wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn't even wish to have to think."

"When it comes to selling stocks, it is plain that nobody can sell unless somebody wants those stocks. If you operate on a large scale, you will have to bear that in mind all the time."

Carl Icahn

Born:	New York City, in 1936
Affiliations:	Icahn & Company (securities firm) Icahn Enterprises L.P. (NYSE:IEP) Icahn Partners (hedge fund) Controlling ownership positions in several major corporations Carl C. Icahn Center for Science at Princeton University
Most Famous For:	The "Icahn Lift." This is the Wall Street catchphrase that describes the upward bounce in a company\'s stock price that typically happens when Carl Icahn starts buying the stock of a company he believes is poorly managed. Since the mid-1980s, Icahn has had titanic battles with multiple U. S.corporations resulting, most of the time, in significant capital gains for these companies\' shareholders and, of course, making Icahn a multibillionaire, whom Forbes ranked as the 46th richest in the world in 2008. Icahn is viewed either as one of history\'s most ruthless corporate raiders or as a positive force for increased shareholder activism, who seeks to correct the abuses of greedy and/or incompetent corporate management.

Personal ProfileIcahn grew up in a middle-class family in the Far Rockaway section of Queens in New York City. He went to Princeton University on a scholarship and graduated in 1957 with a degree in philosophy. He attended New York University's School of Medicine, but dropped out before graduation, reportedly because he didn't like corpses. 
He took an entry level stockbroker's job in New York with Dreyfus & Company in 1961. Seven years later, he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and began his finance career, mostly trading options. However, it didn't take long for Icahn to develop into an activist, pugnacious investor and to begin using ownership positions in publicly held companies to force changes to increase the value of his shares. 

Icahn started his corporate raiding activities in earnest in the late 1970s and hit the big leagues with his hostile takeover of TWA in 1985. He was known as an extremely tough negotiator and a clever strategist, whose persistence and personality quirks often distracted his opponents. A string of corporate battles included such names as RJR Nabisco, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Revlon, Kerr-McGee, Time Warner and Motorola. 

Because of his substantial fortune, Icahn has become a major philanthropist, particularly with donations to his alma mater, Princeton University. Accordingly, he has been the recipient of a number of civic awards for his work and contributions to public health, medical research and education charities in the New York area.
Nevertheless, he is still an active financier. Time Magazine interviewed Icahn on the occasion of his 71^st birthday in February 2007. When he was asked about retirement, he answered, "Well, a number of CEOs have offered to host my retirement party. But I'm just a competitive guy that grew up inQueens. I can't see myself spending the rest of my life in Florida playing golf." 

It's reported that Icahn has built a team of two dozen associates to help him find targets and mount his corporate crusades and will likely continue to pursue his investor activism. 

Investment StyleRenowned investor Wilbur Ross, Icahn's longtime friend and frequent adversary, referred to Icahn in a May 2007 Fortune Magazine article as "the most competitive person I know … he's especially good at terrorizing people and wearing down their defenses." For many corporate executives, that pretty much sums up Carl Icahn's business operandi and investing style.

Icahn's strategy involves targeting a company he thinks is poorly run and whose stock price is trading below value. He thrives when the markets are on a downtrend; when everyone else is selling, he starts buying. He accumulates enough of an ownership position to lobby for a position on the company's board of directors. Usually his first demand is to dump the CEO and, oftentimes, to consider breaking up the company into separate parts and selling them off. Wall Street professionals say that most of the time he is successful because he's intimidating and relentless. He's viewed as such a surefire moneymaker that investment managers typically start buying up the company's stock, which, whether Icahn is successful or not, leaves him with healthy stock price gains. 

A classic example of this phenomenon is Icahn's push in 2006 to oust CEO Richard Parsons and break up Time Warner. It didn't work out that way. When Icahn was asked about his failed attempt in a February 2007 Time Magazine interview, Icahn said "… Dick Parsons agreed to do what we wanted most - a $20 billion buyback of the stock. He did what he promised, and the stock is up 30%. That helps shareholders. Our [hedge] fund made $250 million. It's a nice way to lose."

So how has Icahn's investment style worked out? A 2007 Fortune Magazine profile reported "in its less-than-three-year existence, the Icahn Partners hedge fund has posted annualized gains of 40%; after fees, investors pocketed 28%. That 40% gain trounces the S&P 500's return of around 13%, as well as the 12% for all hedge funds calculated by the HedgeFund.net research firm."

Publications:"King Icahn" (1993) by Mark Stevens

Icahn Quotes:"I make money. Nothing wrong with that. That's what I want to do. That's what I'm here to do. That's what I enjoy."

"CEOs are paid for doing a terrible job. If the system wasn't so messed up, guys like me wouldn't make this kind of money."

"When most investors, including the pros, all agree on something, they're usually wrong." 

William H. Gross

Bill Gross

Born:	Middletown, Ohio, in 1944
Affiliations:	Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO)
Most Famous For:	Considered the "king of bonds," Bill Gross is the world\'s leading bond fund manager. As the founder and managing director of the PIMCO family of bond funds, he and his team of bond professionals have more than $600 billion in fixed-income assets under management. In 1996, he was the first portfolio manager inducted into the Fixed-Income Analyst Society Inc. (FIASI) hall of fame for his major contributions to the advancement of bond and portfolio analysis. Among other investing traits, Gross is famous for his ability to change directions without hesitation in response to changes in the markets. In July 2005, SmartMoney.com\'s Nicole Bullock observed that "Gross doesn\'t adjust to market conditions – he changes them! His views on the bond market are widely followed by professional investors and the investing public worldwide."

Personal Profile

Gross is a Duke University graduate with a degree in psychology (1966). Part of his "informal" education included spending a summer playing professional blackjack in Las Vegas. After graduation, he served as a naval officer on a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam. 

After the military, Gross headed for business school and obtained his MBA in 1971 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) credentials while working as an investment analyst with Pacific Mutual Life in Los Angeles from 1971 to 1976. 

His last assignment at Pacific Mutual from 1976 to 1978 was as an Assistant Vice President managing fixed income securities. Gross founded, and has been the managing director and chief investment officer, for Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO), the world's largest fixed-income management firm, since its inception in 1982. 

Investment Style

In an October, 2005, commentary piece, MarketThoughts.com editor, Henry K. To wrote that Bill Gross "believes that successful investment in the long-run (whether in bonds or equities) rests on two foundations: the ability to formulate and articulate a secular [long-term] outlook and having the correct structural composition within one's portfolio over time." 

Gross describes these foundations as having a three- to five-year forecast that forces an investor to think long term and to avoid the destructive "emotional whipsaws of fear and greed." He clearly states that "such emotions can convince any investor or management firm to do exactly the wrong thing during irrational periods in the market." 

Secondly, he argues that "those who fail to recognize the structural elements of the investment equation [asset allocation, diversification, risk-return measurements and investing costs] will leave far more chips on the table for other more astute investors to scoop up than they could ever imagine."

Publications

• "Bill Gross On Investing"by William H. Gross (1998)
• "Everything You've Heard About Investing Is Wrong!: How To Profit In The Coming Post-Bull Markets" by William H. Gross(1997).
• "Bond King: Investment Secrets From PIMC's Bill Gross" by Timothy Middleton,(2004).

Quotes

"Finding the best person or the best organization to invest your money is one of the most important financial decisions you'll ever make."

"Do you really like a particular stock? Put 10% or so of your portfolio on it. Make the idea count … Good [investment] ideas should not be diversified away into meaningless oblivion."

"The genius of Bill Gross, from the gaming tables to the high-tech world of bond trading, is his knowing, quantifying and playing risk." (Timothy Middleton, "The Bond King") 

"Bill often has been characterized as the Peter Lynch of the bond markets. But based on his longevity … and the size of his assets under management … it would be more appropriate to characterize Peter Lynch as the Bill Gross of the equity markets." (Jack Malvey, Lehman Brothers, 1996)

Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham

Born:	London in 1894; Died 1976
Affiliations:	Newburger, Henderson & Loeb Graham-Newman Corporation
Most Famous For:	Ben Graham excelled as an investment manager and financial educator. He authored, among others, two investment classics of unparalleled importance. He is also universally recognized as the father of two fundamental investment disciplines – security analysis and value investing. His two seminal books, "Security Analysis" (1934), written with David Dodd, and "TheIntelligent Investor" (1949) are considered by many investment professionals to be the best books ever written for stock investors. Both of these books have never been out of print and are still used as texts for university-level courses on investing. John Train, in his investment classic, "The Money Masters" (1980), cites Graham\'s brilliance and influence as such: "Benjamin Graham ranks as this century\'s (and perhaps history\'s) most important thinker on applied portfolio investment, taking it from an art, based on impressions, inside information, flair, to a proto-science, an orderly discipline. He applied great astuteness, hard experience, and infinitely detailed labor to a field full of superstition, tips and guesswork, one in which most people who have something to say also have an incentive to deceive the listener." He is also famous for being a teacher and mentor for Warren Buffet as well as for other well-known investors.

Personal Profile

Benjamin Graham came to the United States as a one-year-old immigrant from England in 1895. He grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. His father died when he was nine years old and the family's hard times, economically speaking, left Graham with a lifetime preoccupation with achieving financial security. 

He graduated from Columbia University in 1914 and went to work immediately for a Wall Street firm, Newburger, Henderson & Loeb, as a messenger. By 1920, he was a partner in the firm.

In 1926, Graham formed an investment partnership with Jerome Newman and started lecturing at Columbia on finance, an endeavor which lasted until his retirement in 1956. It is reported that Graham was wiped out personally in the stock market crash of 1929, but the investment partnership survived and gradually recouped its position. 

Ben Graham learned some valuable lessons from this experience and, in 1934, co-authored a hefty textbook titled "Security Analysis", which is widely considered an investment classic. The Graham-Newman partnership prospered, boasting an average annual return of 17% until its termination in 1956. 

Investment Style

Morningstar's online Interactive Classroom carries this anecdote about the results of Ben Graham's investing style: 

"In 1984, [Warren] Buffet returned to Columbia to give a speech commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of "Security Analysis". During that speech, he presented his own investment record as well as those of Ruane, Knapp, and Schloss [other successful investment managers who were students of Graham at Columbia]. In short, each of these men posted investment results that blew away the returns of the overall market. Buffett noted that each of the portfolios varied greatly in the number and type of stocks, but what did not vary was the managers' adherence to Graham's investment principles."

It is difficult to encapsulate Benjamin Graham's investing style in a few sentences or paragraphs. Readers are strongly urged to refer to his "The Intelligent Investor" to obtain a more thorough understanding of his investment principles.

In brief, the essence of Graham's value investing is that any investment should be worth substantially more than an investor has to pay for it. He believed in thorough analysis, which we would call fundamental analysis. He sought out companies with strong balance sheets, or those with little debt, above-average profit margins, and ample cash flow. 

He coined the phrase "margin of safety" to explain his common-sense formula that seeks out undervalued companies whose stock prices are temporarily down, but whose fundamentals, for the long run, are sound. The margin of safety on any investment is the difference between its purchase price and its intrinsic value. The larger this difference is (purchase price below intrinsic), the more attractive the investment - both from a safety and return perspective - becomes. The investment community commonly refers to these circumstances as low value multiple stocks (P/E, P/B, P/S). 

Graham also believed that market valuations (stock prices) are often wrong. He used his famous "Mr. Market" parable to highlight a simple truth: stock prices will fluctuate substantially in value. His philosophy was that this feature of the market offers smart investors "an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal." 

Publications

• "Security Analysis" (1934) by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd
• "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham (1949)
• "Benjamin Graham: The Memoirs Of The Dean Of Wall Street" by Benjamin Graham and Seymour Chatman (editor) (1996)
• "Benjamin Graham On Value Investing: Lessons From The Dean Of Wall Street" by Janet Lowe (1999)

Quotes

"To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks."

" Most of the time stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble … to give way to hope, fear and greed." 

"Even the intelligent investor is likely to need considerable willpower to keep from following the crowd." 

"It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts."

"It is rare that the founder of a discipline does not find his work eclipsed in rather short order by successors. But for over forty years after publication of the book ["Security Analysis"] that brought structure and logic to a disorderly and confused activity, it is difficult to think of possible candidates for even the runner-up position in the field of security analysis." (Warren Buffet, Financial Analyst Journal, November/December 1976)

Philip Fisher

Philip A. Fisher

Born:	San Francisco, California in 1907; Died 2004
Affiliations:	Fisher & Company
Most Famous For:	Philip Fisher was one of the most influential investors of all time. His investment philosophies, recorded in his investment classic, "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits" (1958) are still relevant today and are widely studied and applied by investment professionals. It was the first investment book ever to make the New York Times bestseller list. Fisher\'s son, Kenneth L. Fisher, wrote a eulogy for his father in his regular column in Forbes magazine (March 11, 2004): "Among the pioneer, formative thinkers in the growth stock school of investing, he may have been the last professional witnessing the 1929 crash to go on to become a big name. His career spanned 74 years, but was more diverse than growth stock picking. He did early venture capital and private equity, advised chief executives, wrote and taught. He had an impact. For decades, big names in investing claimed Dad as a mentor, role model and inspiration."

Personal Profile

Philip Fisher's career began in 1928 when he dropped out of the newly created Stanford BusinessSchool to work as a securities analyst with the Anglo-London Bank in San Francisco. He switched to a stock exchange firm for a short time before starting his own money management business as Fisher & Company in 1931. He managed the company's affairs until his retirement in 1999 at the age of 91, and is reported to have made his clients extraordinary investment gains. 

Although he began some fifty years before the name Silicon Valley became known, he specialized in innovative companies driven by research and development. He practiced long-term investing, and strove to buy great companies at reasonable prices. He was a very private person, giving few interviews, and was very selective about the clients he took on. He was not well-known to the public until he published his first book in 1958.

Investment Style

Fisher achieved an excellent record during his 70 plus years of money management by investing in well-managed, high-quality growth companies, which he held for the long term. For example, he bought Motorola stock in 1955 and didn't sell it until his death in 2004. 

His famous "fifteen points to look for in a common stock" were divided up between two categories: management's qualities and the characteristics of the business. Important qualities for management included integrity, conservative accounting, accessibility and good long-term outlook, openness to change, excellent financial controls, and good personnel policies. 

Important business characteristics would include a growth orientation, high profit margins, high return on capital, a commitment to research and development, superior sales organization, leading industry position and proprietary products or services. 

Philip Fisher searched far and wide for information on a company. A seemingly simplistic tool, what he called "scuttlebutt," or the "business grapevine," was his technique of choice. 

He devotes a considerable amount of commentary to this topic in "Common Stocks And Uncommon Profits". He was superb at networking and used all the contacts he could muster to gather information and perspective on a company. He considered this method of researching a company to be extremely valuable. 

Publications 

• "Common Stocks And Uncommon Profits" by Phillip A. Fisher(1958)
• "Conservative Investors Sleep Well" by Phillip A. Fisher (1975)
• "Developing An Investment Philosophy" by Philip A. Fisher (1980)

Quotes

"I don't want a lot of good investments; I want a few outstanding ones."

"I remember my sense of shock some half-dozen years ago when I read a [stock] recommendation to sell shares of a company . . . The recommendation was not based on any long-term fundamentals. Rather, it was that over the next six months the funds could be employed more profitably elsewhere." 

"I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits". When I met him, I was impressed by the man and his ideas. A thorough understanding of a business, by using Phil's techniques … enables one to make intelligent investment commitments." (Warren Buffett)