We received a question in comment section of our last post on selecting 10 stocks to buy in next market crash. The question asked was very simple, but relevant…
“Why do you guys choose such simple filters for shortlisting stocks? There are more comprehensive and well proven methods of doing the same.”
We will first explain a little about these 5 filters and then answer the question –
Filter 1: Management (Atleast Decent)
The last two words of this filter, ‘atleast decent’, make this a completely subjective criteria. We believe that we are average investors. Hence, we are the last ones to receive company / promoter related news, leave alone insider information. Hence, in the event we do come to know that management is not trustworthy (read decent), then it means that there is more negative news which has not even come out in public domain. Isn’t it? Hence, we will prefer to stick with companies with ‘known decent’ promoters / management.
Filter 2: Not Highly Cyclical
Some experts say that one should buy cyclical business at high PEs. It is at these times, when things are about to turn around for better. They may be right. And sometimes, it seems logical on face value of the argument. But we are not sure. Frankly, we haven’t devoted adequate time to analyzing cyclical businesses. And hence, we don’t understand them too well. Also, highly cyclical businesses are highly uncertain. Such companies are at the mercy of the economic cycles. So it’s better that we avoid such companies.
Filter 3: Atleast Average Growth Potential
If the underlying business does not have any growth potential, then how can we expect the stock to move up? We should never forget how Kodak, a great company which did not embrace the advent of digital photography and how it paid the price with its bankruptcy.
Filter 4: God Dividend Record
We just love dividends. That is all we have to say. 🙂 But we have a reason for it. You can read it here.
Filter 5: Are we ready to hold the stock for 10 Years?
Mr Buffett once remarked, “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”Being self-claimed long term investors, we ourselves would like to hold stocks of great businesses. We would love to act like owners of companies. And when a great company is going through tough times, the owners don’t sell and runaway. They stick with it. They know that when times will change, the company would be back. And in a much better shape.
So now, we are back to our original question…
Why do we use such simple filters??
The primary reason for using such simple filters is that these have worked for us. It is easier to evaluate stocks on these filters than more complex quantitative ones. Though we do use such quantitative metrics in our case studies of individual stocks, we always prefer to keep things simple. We try to stick with proven businesses. We try to find indicators of overall pessimism in the market, so that we can be a little sure that we are being greedy when others are fearful. We know that by following these filters, we are simply eliminating the possibility of finding those 50 and 100 baggers. We are restricting ourselves to a very small universe of 40 (or max 50) stocks. But we accept this tradeoff. We don’t want to lose money in stock markets by taking very risky bets. We know what we are good at and we will prefer sticking to our strengths. Over time, we will increase our expertise in other areas and may be, would be able to find the next multibagger. As of now, we are happy to lay a strong foundation for our long term portfolio.
We hope this post clarifies the doubt which our reader(s) had. 🙂
makes a lot of sense.. why act like an expert when you are not… anyways experts are not able to live up to the hype they create around themselves…
great post
@07abb7f66e86bc42d8b20c8f37bf8fd9:disqus
We second you 🙂
We too would love to be referred to as Experts of Stock Markets. But the only expert in stock markets is the MARKET itself. Rest, are students. 🙂
Thanks for answering my concerns with a detailed post…
It seems that we dont need to put in a lot of effort in stock picking 🙂
@bff2769dcbdcb6349d1c9f5c9871c07d:disqus
Your concerns were genuine and actually helped other readers too.
And yes, great stock picking is simple, but not easy 😉