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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. heless, 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
essful investors, hoping to find in them the key to their stock-picking abilities, so that
we can replicate them and e 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 panies 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 essful 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 ess in investing may lie not in knowing what
makes Peter Lynch essful but in finding out more about yourself.
What is an investment philosophy?
An investment philosophy is a coherent way of thinking about markets, how they
work (and sometimes do no