tailieunhanh - Investment Philosophies

We all dream of beating the market and being super investors and spend an inordinate amount of time and resources in this endeavor. Consequently, we are easy prey for the magic bullets and the secret formulae offered by eager salespeople pushing their wares. In spite of our best efforts, most of us fail in our attempts to be more than “average” investors. Nonetheless, we keep trying, hoping that we can be more like the investing legends – another Warren Buffett or Peter Lynch. | WILEY FINANCE ASWATH DAMODARAN Successful Strategies and the Investors Who Made Them Work 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION We all dream of beating the market and being super investors and spend an inordinate amount of time and resources in this endeavor. Consequently we are easy prey for the magic bullets and the secret formulae offered by eager salespeople pushing their wares. In spite of our best efforts most of us fail in our attempts to be more than average investors. Nonetheless we keep trying hoping that we can be more like the investing legends - another Warren Buffett or Peter Lynch. We read the words written by and about successful investors hoping to find in them the key to their stock-picking abilities so that we can replicate them and become wealthy quickly. In our search though we are whipsawed by contradictions and anomalies. In one corner of the investment townsquare stands one advisor yelling to us to buy businesses with solid cash flows and liquid assets because that s what worked for Buffett. In another corner another investment expert cautions us that this approach worked only in the old world and that in the new world of technology we have to bet on companies with solid growth prospects. In yet another corner stands a silver tongued salesperson with vivid charts and presents you with evidence of his capacity to get you in and out of markets at exactly the right times. It is not surprising that facing this cacophony of claims and counterclaims that we end up more confused than ever. In this chapter we present the argument that to be successful with any investment strategy you have to begin with an investment philosophy that is consistent at its core and which matches not only the markets you choose to invest in but your individual characteristics. In other words the key to success in investing may lie not in knowing what makes Peter Lynch successful but in finding out more about yourself. What is an investment philosophy An investment philosophy is a .