Updated 6/24/2023
“While they differ greatly in style, these investors are, mentally, always buying the business, not the stock. A few of them sometimes buy whole businesses; far more often, they buy small pieces of the business.”
Warren Buffett, Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville
In May 1984, Buffett laid out everything you need to know about his investing philosophy.
In a speech at Columbia Business School, which they adapted later into an essay, Buffett introduced what he termed “The Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville.”
The “Superinvestors” is a name Buffett gave to Benjamin Graham and a group of his proteges. The money managers once studied under or worked for Graham, Buffett, or Munger, Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway. We will talk about each of them more in-depth coming up.
Buffett gave the speech in honor of the 50th anniversary of “Security Analysis,” written by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. The book was published in 1934 and was the seminal book on analyzing business using financial fundamentals outlined by Graham and Dodd.
Warren Buffett is arguably the world’s great investor and has had many books, essays, and papers written about his greatness. I am not smart or eloquent enough to improve on them, but I will touch on his beginnings momentarily.
Although Buffett’s father was a stockbroker, he didn’t have his a-ha moment until he read another famous Graham book, “The Intelligent Investor.” It caused Buffett to apply to the Columbia School of Business to study with Graham. To this day, Buffett credits that book with changing his professional life, and Warren believes that most of what everybody needs to know about investing comes from two chapters in the book.
The chapter on Mr. Market outlines behavioral finance concepts before the term even existed. And the chapter on the Margin of Safety.
In today’s post, we will learn:
- Breakdown of the Speech
- Efficient Market Hypothesis vs. Graham-and-Doddsville
- Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville
Breakdown of the speech
At the start of the speech, he asks, “is the Graham and Dodd quote “look for values with a significant margin of safety relative to prices” quote approach to security analysis out of date?”
He then touches on the Efficient Market Hypothesis theory, which states that the market is efficient in how it prices each stock in the market, which means that the market is taking into account everything known about the company’s prospects and the state of the economy in the price of each stock.
The hypothesis states there are no undervalued stocks because there are smart security analysts who utilize all available information to ensure consistently accurate pricing.
He thinks that this is bunk!
According to the theorists, investors who can beat the market year after year are just lucky, which would rule out anyone who follows the value investing philosophy of Benjamin Graham and his followers.
In his speech, he asks us to consider a group of investors who have beaten the S&P 500 consistently year in and year out. He wants us to consider their performance against the theory that the market is efficient.
To illustrate his point, he starts by using an example of coin-flipping. The next comments are straight from his speech.
“I would like you to imagine a national coin-flipping contest. Let’s assume we get 225 million Americans up tomorrow morning, and we ask them to all wager a dollar. They go out in the morning and call the flip of a coin. If they call correctly, they win a dollar from those that call incorrectly. Each day the losers drop out, and on the subsequent days, the stakes build as all previous winnings are put on the line. After ten flips on ten mornings, there will be approximately 220,000 people in the United States that have correctly called ten flips in a row. They have each won a little over $1,000.
Now this group will probably will start getting a little puffed up about this, human nature being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at cocktail parties, they will occasionally admit to attractive members of the opposite sex what their technique is, and what marvelous insights they bring to the flipping field.
Assuming the winners are getting the appropriate rewards from the losers, in another ten days, we will have 215 people who have successfully called their coin flips twenty times in a row and who, by this exercise, each have turned one dollar into a little over $1 million.”
Of course, some professors would state you could conduct the same experiment with orangutans and get the same result. And to break it down further, you could find a concentration of winners from a particular geographical region, such as Minneapolis. Your natural inclination would be to go to the zoo and study the habits, food, and other environmental stimuli leading to the concentration of orangutans producing these winning flips.
The other conclusion you could come to would be it could be intellectual origin instead of geographical. Buffett thinks a “disproportionate number of successful coin-flippers in the investment world come from a very small intellectual village that could be called Graham-and-Doddsville. A concentration of winners that can’t be explained by chance can be traced to this intellectual village.”
In the group of investors, Buffett wants us to consider, there has been a common intellectual patriarch, Benjamin Graham. All investors from the village have followed different paths and picked different stocks, yet they have had a combined record we can’t ignore or write off as simply chance.
The common theme of the investors of Graham-and-Doddsville is this; they search for differences: the value of the business and the price of small pieces of business in the market.
Efficient Market Hypothesis vs. Graham-and-Doddsville
Before we get on with the individual investors of Graham-and-Doddsville, we need to discuss the Efficient Market Hypothesis, why Warren Buffett disagrees with it, and how he dismantles it.
As we discussed earlier, with the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), it is impossible to “beat the market” because stock market efficiency causes current share prices to always incorporate all relevant information.
According to EMH, stocks always trade at their fair value on stock exchanges, making it impossible for investors to purchase undervalued stocks or sell stocks for inflated prices. The theory would indicate it would be impossible to outperform the overall market through expert stock picking or market timing. The only way an investor could get better returns would be to find riskier investments.
As you can imagine, this news greatly relieved the investing community because now they knew they didn’t need to worry about market timing or stock-picking skills. Since all the relevant information was already included in the stock price, one didn’t need to worry anymore about researching the companies, the macroeconomic developments, or the regulatory environment.
They didn’t need to do anything. Zip. Nada. How liberating.
You could purchase anything you wanted at any price because all factors are already included, which means you need to buy, and all will be ok.
Eugene Fama partially developed this hypothesis in the 1960s. And part of this theory falls into Modern Portfolio Theory, which Harry Markowitz developed in 1952. This theory states that you must take on a higher risk to achieve higher returns. Lower returns mean lower risk.
In 2013 Eugene was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on this theory.
So what did Warren Buffett think of this hypothesis? Let’s look at his words directly in an excerpt from one of his shareholder letters for Berkshire Hathaway from 1988.
“Amazingly, EMH was embraced not only by academics but by many investment professionals and corporate managers as well. Observing that the market was frequently efficient, they went on to conclude incorrectly that it was always efficient. The difference between these propositions is night and day.
In my opinion, the continuous 63-year arbitrage experience of Graham-Newman Corp, Buffett Partnership, and Berkshire illustrates just how foolish EMH is. (There’s plenty of other evidence, also) While at Graham-Newman, I made a study of its earnings from arbitrage during the entire 1926-1956 lifespan of the company. Unleveraged returns earned 20% per year. Starting in 1956, I applied Ben Graham’s arbitrage principles, first at Buffett Partnership and then Berkshire. Though I’ve not made an exact calculation, I have done enough work to know that the 1956-1988 returns averaged well over 20%. (Of course, I operated in an environment far more favorable than Ben’s, he had 1929-1932 to contend with.)
All of the conditions are present that are required for a fair test of portfolio performance: (1) the three organizations traded hundreds of different securities while building this 63-year record; (2) the results are not skewed by a few fortunate experiences; (3) we did not have to dig for obscure facts or develop keen insights about products or managements – we simply acted on highly-publicized events; and (4) our arbitrage positions were a clearly identified universe – they have not been selected by hindsight.
Over the 63 years, the general market delivered just under a 10% annual return, including dividends. That means $1000 would have grown to $405,000 if all income had been reinvested. A 20% rate of return, however, would have produced $97 million. That strikes us as a statistically-significant differential that might, conceivably, arouse one’s curiosity.
Yet proponents of the theory have never seemed interested in discordant evidence of this type. True, they don’t talk quite as much about their theory today as they used to. But no one, to my knowledge, has ever said he was wrong, no matter how many thousands of students he has sent forth misinstructed. EMT, moreover, continues to be an integral part of the investment curriculum at major business schools. Apparently, a reluctance to recant, and thereby to demystify the priesthood, is not limited to theologians.
Naturally, the disservice done students and gullible investment professionals who have swallowed EMT has been an extraordinary service to us and other followers of Graham. In any other contest – financial, mental, and physical – it’s an enormous advantage to have opponents who have been taught that it’s useless to even try. From a selfish point of view, Grahamites would probably endow chairs to ensure the perpetual teaching of EMT.”
I would say that pretty much sums up what he thinks of EMH. I don’t think I could have said it any more eloquently.
Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville
We have discussed EMH and what Buffett thinks of it; now, let’s look at the investors he discusses and their records.
Walter Schloss
First up is Walter Schloss. Over 28 years, he compiled a 21.3% rate compounded annually. Schloss never went to college but took a night course from Benjamin Graham at the New York Institute of Finance. Afterward, he worked at Graham-Newman until 1955.
Schloss was different. He didn’t play by the rules of Wall Street. He ignored the news, bought cigar butts or cheap, depressed stocks, and held them forever. He looked for stocks that were trading for less than their book value. He also looked for companies with no debt, low price-to-book value, and simple businesses that he could easily understand. He was a buy-and-hold investor who held onto his picks for many years. For more info on Walter, check out this great article from Old School Value here.
Tom Knapp
Next up is Tom Knapp, who formed Tweedy, Brown in 1968 with Tom Anderson. Tom was a chemistry major at Princeton before WW2 and, after the war, spent some time at the beach. One day he learned David Dodd was teaching an investing course at night at Columbia. He took it as a non-credit course and loved it so much he enrolled at Columbia Business School and received his MBA.
Tweedy, Brown Partners had over 16 years of 20% returns compounded annually. They have a wonderful manual called “What Has Worked in Investing.” I highly recommend you check it out. It’s Free!
Warren Buffett
Next up is the author himself. Warren Buffett. We have spent a lot of time talking about so I won’t go into much detail here. His returns at the time of the speech were 23.8% compounded annually. Not too shabby.
Bill Ruane
Buffett’s fourth investor for comparison purposes was Bill Ruane, who ran the Sequoia Fund. This fund is arguably one of the most famous funds out there. It has been closed to new investors for years. I just learned that Guy Spier, an amazing investor himself, bought a share of Sequoia on eBay so that he could attend the annual meetings.
Bill Ruane graduated from Harvard Business School and worked on Wall Street. When Warren Buffett wound up his Buffett Partnership, he asked Bill if he would handle all of his partners, and they went to a person who went with Bill to set up the Sequoia Fund to invest those funds. The Sequoia Fund generated returns of 17.2% compounded annually over 14 years. Pretty outstanding.
I should note the investors we have discussed; we have had very little overlap in the companies they owned, which I find very interesting, indicating many ways to value companies you are interested in buying. It is not always the same companies striking your fancy.
One of the great things about value investing is taking Ben Graham’s teachings as a foundation and branching off. Which is what every investor we have discussed so far has done, and you can too.
Charlie Munger
The fifth investor on the list is Charlie Munger, Warren’s right-hand man through the last 56 years. Charlie graduated from Harvard Law and worked as a lawyer for many years. After a conversation with Warren about changing careers, he told Charlie that law was a fine hobby, but he could do better.
He was right. Charlie was a very concentrated investor who only held a few stocks in his portfolios, which led to some pretty crazy volatility, but he was mentally prepared. He has become a brilliant teacher of mental models and has some awesome talks and speeches you should check out. My favorite is here.
Charlie’s returns during the 13 years shown here were 19.8% compounded annually. Pretty impressive.
Rick Guerin
Next up on the list is Rick Guerin, a math major at USC, where he met Charlie Munger. He worked at IBM after graduation and was a convert after Charlie converted from Warren. He operated the Pacific Partners, and his returns were an eye-popping 32.9% compounded annually. That is amazing and probably the least known of the people mentioned in Warren’s speech. His returns were the best of any of the people mentioned. Little is known of him after 1984.
Stan Perlmeter
The seventh investor from the speech is Stan Perlmeter, liberal arts major from the University of Michigan. He was a partner of an ad agency before switching to investing. He’s Another investor that is little known and not much more after the speech. He was not trained in business but took to value investing quite naturally. He was only interested in what the business was worth. When the business was trading for a discount to what he thought it was worth, he would buy it. He was only interested in deep value. His returns of 23% compounded annually over 18 years are pretty impressive.
The last two investments that Buffett mentions are pension funds that he didn’t have direct involvement in; he recommended that they install value-oriented managers to improve the fund’s performance. Both funds have subsequently held a number one rating in their size class for funds.
A final note about all the investors Buffett selected: he knew these people and was familiar with their backgrounds, teachings, and philosophies regarding investing. They all had different takes on value investing, and there was very little overlap in the portfolios, but the results they achieved are nothing short of extraordinary.
Their philosophy was simple. Buy businesses, not stocks. Find a good business that is selling for less than it is worth. Do that, and you will have a margin of safety if you make a mistake. And you will make money over time. That is the key, patience and time.
Final Thoughts
The speech Warren Buffett gave was amazing. He laid out his thoughts on value investing and compared them to the latest theories on how stock markets worked. He pulled no punches when he stated that the EMH and modern portfolio theory were wrong.
His whole goal with the speech was to educate. He wanted to show everyone his way of looking at businesses was a much easier and more practical way to do it. His results and the other investor’s results he mentions should end any doubt about his speech. They speak for themselves.
A note about Eugene Fama: later on in life, he changed his opinion on value investing and did studies showing small-cap stocks could outperform the market over time. He felt this was based on the higher risk premium of a small-cap stock. They have more volatility because of their size.
So over time, he has agreed that there are mispriced stocks in the market, which Warren was preaching from the beginning.
Value investing is not easy, and it takes a certain type of individual with the right mental capacity to handle the ups and downs of the market. It has nothing to do with brainpower; only you have the stomach for the stock market’s roller-coaster ride.
The principles of buying dollar bills for 40 cents is a pretty simple process to understand. In Warren’s opinion, it either takes to you immediately or doesn’t take at all. Of course, there is more to it than we are discussing here, but the concept of buying at a discount is pretty simple and what we all strive to achieve.
I will close this up with a quote from Warren; after all, he says it best.
“In conclusion, some of the more commercially minded among you may wonder why I am writing this article. Adding many converts to value approach will narrow the spreads between price and value. I can only tell you that the secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Benjamin Graham and David Dodd wrote Security Analysis, yet I have seen no trend toward value investing in the 35 years I’ve practiced it. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. The academic world, if anything, has actually backed away from the teaching of value investing over the last 30 years. It’s likely to continue that way. Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham & Dodd will continue to prosper.”
I will put the link to this amazing speech here.
As always, thank you for taking the time to read this post, and I hope you find something of value on your investing journey.
If I can further assist, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Until next time, take care and be safe out there,
Dave
