On a recent episode of the rundown – a weekly YouTube show with Andrew Kuhn and Vetle Forsland – Andrew asked the question of whether you could be a good investor without being a good stock picker and vice versa. To answer this question, I’m going to use an analogy I made on a recent podcast between picking stocks and playing poker. If, in a game of Texas Hold ‘em – you are dealt the hole cards Ace / Ace, you have a better chance

A Focused Compounding App subscriber had a question about something I said in a recent podcast: “In your recent podcast you said you thought a tobacco firm should buy back its own stock rather than pay dividends – you said you don’t think it should pay a dividend at all and instead should avoid acquisitions and buy back its stock. Could you expand on that? This is somewhat similar to NC, actually, and why this stood out to me. You’ve told me before why you

One of Warren Buffett’s basic tests for buying a stock is the idea that if you wouldn’t buy the whole company at this price – market cap, enterprise value, etc. – you shouldn’t buy the stock. Not even to hold it for just a week, month, or year. Does the reverse hold true though? If you would buy the entire company – does that mean you should buy the stock? If you like the management, controlling shareholders, etc. and you like the way they’ve been

Hi, Geoff. I have just recently read your old article titled “How To Find Competitive Advantages In The Real World”. My question is, is that article still relevant at this point in time (because it is quite old)? If any, what would you update or change in that article? And about your comments on books about competition, do you believe that it is still true till today (Or you would like add to other book recommendation on competition besides “Hidden Champions”) ? Is it possible

Someone sent Geoff this email ( to ask your own question: just send me an email ) : Hey Geoff, The last 10 years saw the dominance of ‘growth’ (as quantitatively defined) over ‘value’. If you were a value (however it is defined) investor, you probably underperformed the relevant indices. (1) Is there a lesson to be learned here? When I see stocks trading at really high multiples, my immediate instinct is to ignore them – either too hard to value or too expensive. But

We did a Focused Compounding Podcast episode that was 100% dedicated to bank investing. In that podcast notice that I analyze banks completely differently than most value investors. I don’t believe price-to-book is an especially important metric. I value banks based on the amount of their share price, their deposits per share (so P/Deposits so to speak), their growth in deposits, and finally the profitability of those deposits (how low cost are they, how “sticky” are they). I spend very little time on the asset

One of the biggest issues I come across when talking with people about specific stocks is that while we can have a good discussion of bottom-line numbers like earnings – the discussion of items higher in the income statement is not so good. Andrew and I did a podcast about this recently. It’s the one where we discussed gross profits. But, it’s not just an issue of gross profits. It’s also an issue of what are the customer economics like, what are the store economics