Concentrated Investing:Strategies of the World's Greatest Concentrated Value Investors
Interview with Allen C Benello
February 12, 2018Sign Up to listen to full interview.
About Allen C Benello
ALLEN C. BENELLO, CFA, is the chairman of White River Investment Partners, LLC, a private investment firm in San Francisco.
Interview Summary
For decades investors have been told to diversify among a large number of holdings because financial markets are inherently fragile and volatile. However, many value investors have amassed large amounts of wealth by simply ignoring this principle and keeping their focus on what they know well and hold for longer periods of time.
Concentrated Investing, which follows a few well-known investors along with some less prominent names, offers an inside view of the practices that these investors invariably share, as well as their temperament and discipline.
Authors Benello, van Biema and Carlisle provide a road map in a book that is easy to understand and richly detailed with relevant examples and clear explanations.
Many of the investment principles highlighted in the book are easy to comprehend and not that hard to follow as long as investors are willing to be disciplined in behavior, prepared to do rigorous analysis and focus on fewer companies that they truly understand.
Key Topics
- What is value investing and how is it practiced in general?
- How does value investing differ from growth investing or trading in stocks?
- What is the temperament of a value investor and why discipline matters?
- How do both capital allocation and investment holding periods matter in generating superior performance?
- What is concentrated investing and how is concentration helpful?
- How do concentrated investors function?
- How can sources of value be quantitatively different?
- How is performance equal to the right stocks in the right amount over the right period of time?
- How did the famous value investor Warren Buffett outgrow his mentor Benjamin Graham, and his partner Charlie Munger did not?
- Paradox of security analysis and portfolio construction – how they relate to portfolio return.
- Concentration – amplification vs volatility
- Why good analysis alone is not enough to generate good returns?
- Two caveats – intensive research and analysis. Goal is simply a reference.