Warren Buffett’s annual letter was great in all the easy ways and disappointing in the ways that matter the most to his shareholder partners

The object of the game was to get to the finish line first and then become the leader the next round. The stock market has its own game of “Simon says” and that is in the mall property world.

We have enjoyed watching what happens in the late stage of a financial euphoria episode play out in the escapades of millennial investors on Reddit, who seem to “rule the nation.” While politicians, regulators, the media and others try to sort this out, we thought some historical perspective might be helpful.

There have been a small number of consistent alpha-creating axioms in the U.S. stock market over time. Value beat growth over long time frames, tech stocks hit bottom in the summer and crowded trades separate you from your money, to name a few.

We were fortunate to watch a recent interview Charlie Munger did with Cal Tech as a distinguished alum. We consider him to be one of the most successful contrarian investment thinkers on the planet. At 96 years of age, he has no fear of being politically incorrect. We contrast this with the mountain of writing, media and rhetoric associated with the topic of climate change.

There appears to be a few huge statistical bargains available in the stock market based on the simplified version of Benjamin Graham’s intrinsic value calculation.

We came up with a theory many years ago to address how important psychology is to owning common stocks. We found that the risks go up in a stock market, or in an individual stock, when a “well-known fact” (WKF) was acted on in the extreme.

When you run an equity portfolio which is concentrated in 25-30 common stock selections, there are usually three stocks which stick out as particularly attractive at any given time.

Our experience tells us that we have hope from the indignity and humiliation of the present circumstances.

We recently read Peter Doran’s book, Breaking Rockefeller, which is a fabulous economic history of the world from 1840-1920 and focuses on how the monopoly created by John D. Rockefeller was broken from 1890-1910. We also watched a documentary called, “The Social Dilemma,” which explains, through the eyes of some of the social media creators, how incredibly damaging the monopolies, created by internet technology, are to society.

Anyone who owns U.S. large cap stocks must understand what can happen from the actions of the government to enforce the laws on the books for antitrust. Contrary to popular opinion, these laws are not set up to primarily protect consumers from being gouged on price by someone with a monopoly.

We became extremely bearish on energy in 2011. At the time, we saw interest in Seattle for hybrid and electric cars. This convinced us that 10% of the cars on the road nationwide might be hybrid and electric by 2020.

An interesting contrast was drawn on September 15, 2020 between Lennar’s (LEN) earnings call and statistics on revenue per employee at Apple Corporation (AAPL). Lennar described strong growth out into the future in a measured way, because they believe that the prior decade created a home supply deficit due to underbuilding.

We hear numerous market strategists talk about stocks which are going up because “there is no alternative” to owning them. In the Wall Street vernacular, this goes by the phrase TINA.

Since the inflation cocktail is closely related to value stock outperformance, we are very excited about our future value investing possibilities.

In the time since COVID-19 hit the economy and stock market, there has been three phases. First, the question was ‘when’ will the economy return to pre-COVID normal? Next came ‘sooner or later’? Recently, we have moved to ‘will the economy ever come back’? For long-duration investors like us, what are the investment implications in where we are now in a U.S. stock market with many securities priced for ‘never’?

When you are in a financial euphoria episode, like the one we are in currently, it is hard to visualize the impact it has when it breaks. Historically, it is the leading cause of stock market failure. We thought it would be helpful to discuss the secondary impact of the euphoria on common stocks.

The nice thing about being the boy who cried wolf is that you look stupid before you are proven correct and you look smart when you are right, but nobody believes you until it is too late.

With markets extremely difficult and volatile as we work through COVID-19, we thought it would be good to review important parts of our investment discipline. One way to do that is to consider stocks we found via our eight criteria for stock selection and did not keep long enough to get to their ultimate rewards.

On June 4, 2020, eBay (EBAY) released a business update to make investors aware that the quarantine circumstances have caused their business to perform “significantly better than expectations,” compared to their earnings report on April 29, 2020.

A series of charts and historical evidence exists in late May of 2020 which shows that the S&P 500 Index and the vast majority of institutional investors of all shapes and forms have concentrated their investments in the most popular stocks in the stock market.

Great investment opportunities are lonely. History shows us the crowd behaviors to avoid and the investment market circumstances to capitalize on. We believe we are at one of the great junctures, where the crowd thinks they unequivocally know the future.

Warren Buffett has been arguably the best asset allocator and value stock picker of the last 60 years. We are normally thrilled to sit in his classroom. Quite frankly, we were baffled by the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting held on Saturday in Omaha.

You have to love The Wall Street Journal writer, Jason Zweig. His extremely inciteful “Intelligent Investor” column could be called “Jason’s Wet Blanket,” because he seems to throw a wet blanket on most investment disciplines in U.S. stocks. This week’s wet blanket is designed to create even more desperation for value investors via his interview with Charlie Munger.

This smashing of economic hopes, right before one of our brightest demographic phases, could be a bonanza which only those of us who are willing to look foolish can acquire.

The year after I graduated from college, the movie Animal House debuted in 1981. With everything falling apart for the Delta fraternity, including grades and double-triple probation, all looked lost. At the point when others would give up, senior fraternity member, John Blutarsky, gave a spirited call to arms by reminding everyone that the U.S. didn’t give up when our Naval operations at Pearl Harbor were bombed on December 7, 1941.

This year feels so much like late in 1981, late in 1999 and late in 2008 to us. The first reaction by investors was to flush whatever they had left in economically sensitive stocks. Then, as if there hadn’t been enough torture for value investors today, Saudi Arabia decided to chop the knees out from under the oil industry in the U.S.

Those of you who have been with us recently know that we are calling the recent decline in value stocks a capitulation in a value investing depression. The coronavirus has sucked all the economic optimism out of a market which has hugged tightly to large growth companies providing reliable sales or earnings momentum.

To us, Warren Buffett is the greatest value investor of our time. He wrote the annual letter to his Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) shareholders on February 22, 2020. This letter happens to coincide with some of his worst relative performance in the last year to five years.

A truly interesting contradiction is developing in stock markets around the world. A number of major corporate executives are calling for businesses to be judged by something other than the net present value of their future earnings or other conventional business/investment metrics.

In the annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in early 2000, Warren Buffett attempted to remind everyone why value investing works, despite the financial euphoria all around him at that time. We will revisit this valuable lesson and draw implications for reviving enthusiasm for value investing at a point eerily similar to early 2000.

Our definition of value is to buy meritorious companies at a significant discount to intrinsic value with a high margin of safety. Since doing this is more art than science, the margin of safety is important.

In a recent appearance on CNBC, we were asked about what we do with stocks we own which have run-up recently. They asked us how we plan to handle Disney (DIS), JPMorgan (JPM) and Target (TGT) after those stocks enjoyed strong price increases this year.

One way of thinking about the share price of a common stock is the price range as a teeter-totter. When the psychology of investors is very negative, enthusiasm for the company hits the ground. On the other end, when everyone is in love with a company’s shares, their end of the board can’t seem to get any higher. Where is the board end hitting the ground currently and who is stuck up in the air on a psychological high?

As Carl Icahn bailed out on Occidental Petroleum (OXY) common shares recently, selling spread as traders and algorithms begged on more selling.

In the revenue growth world of the last five years, this make-believe company would be a huge success story. They would tout a 100% growth in sales the second year and ask investors to ignore the doubling of the loss from $100,000 to $200,000 for the sake of growth.

In financial euphoria episodes, investors become immune to the risks of capital destruction by blacking out to their normal risk aversion. Usually these episodes come from extrapolating the recent past out many years into the future. What can we learn from other disciplines about blacking out? How did this happen with investors in the past and where are risks in the U.S. stock market blacked out today?

When baby-boomer adults were in their twenties, we sang along with Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. Their song, “Money for Nothing” defined the era of music videos. We got cable in 1981 and will admit that we were glued to the TV watching music videos of the bands and performers we loved.

Over the last ten years we’ve seen the rise of the Battle Royal markets and the shift away from one-on-one investing. There are all sorts of different battle royal’s, but the ones I watched as a kid were the biggest events in pro wrestling...

It is human to want to win and we are pre-programmed as children to get what we want quickly. Then we become adults in need of good investment returns and we are forced to operate in longer time frames of five to ten years. Only mavericks want to do what is needed.

We believe money always goes where it gets treated the best. A recent article detailing the most attractive places in the U.S. for millennials to buy a house included the following cities, and that has implications for investing, not just nesting.

One of the all-time classic ballad songs is Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable.” The song gives us a great picture of what has been going on in the common stock market with meritorious companies which have been thrown in the bargain bin.

If you examine the portfolio of the Daily Journal, run by Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, you will see three main stocks. In 2009, near the market bottom, Munger purchased shares of Wells Fargo (WFC), Bank of America (BAC) and U.S. Bancorp (USB).

The stock market has a history of torturing highly-valued knowledge. About every seven years a consensus forms around the fastest growing sector of the stock market, or the fastest growing country, or the fastest growing industry.

In today’s missive, we would like to discuss the tribulation arising out of political scrutiny and the sectors or companies suffering at the hands of political football.

Why is free cash flow so important in common stock selection? First, you must think like the owner of an entire business. As a sole owner, the cash flow leftover after all obligations are paid is all yours. The more of it you get, the richer you are!

A series of important factors in the U.S. stock market are in play which beg the question, “Are we at the beginning of a risk cycle or at an ending?” The answers will have a bearing on what to own and where to be positioned going forward. These thoughts won’t be exhaustive, but we hope to get you thinking on a few important subjects.

Many are wondering why the market for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) has performed so poorly, even though the flood of hot new ones came to market recently. It took three years to choke demand for money-losing dot-com IPO companies back in 1997, even though Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called the mania for tech stocks in late 1996 an “irrational exuberance.” What has killed the goose which traditionally laid the golden eggs on Wall Street?

Charlie Munger set the tone for the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. He said that people involved in creating cryptocurrencies, “honored the life and work of Judas Iscariot.” On many major subjects, questions were fired at Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger related to short comings which self-proclaimed expert observers see at Berkshire

We believe the U.S. stock market will come down to a clash between one very positive forward-looking set of facts and a very negative set over the next ten years.