Negative comments welcome

Positive comments are not nearly as valuable

Since I started investing seriously around 20 years ago, one thing I have worked at in managing the process of evaluating new investment ideas to try limit bias in my analysis.

To this end, a Buffett example I try to follow is to never check a company’s stock price until after reading its financial filings and making my estimate of its intrinsic value. The reasoning is that if I start knowing the valuation necessary to buy the stock, if I fall in love with the company while formulating it’s valuation, I may subconsciously steer my estimate higher to justify buying it.

So one of the reasons I’ve started this blog with comments open is to help further rationalize my process of analysis, i.e. I’m hoping to hear contrary opinions to my own. So please post your negative comments. It should benefit both of us, by helping to better vet the ideas you read here. Otherwise, the danger is I live alone inside my head where all models can grow to the sky and their terminal value always end in “flowery meadows and rainbow skies and rivers made of chocolate, where the children dance and laugh and play with gumdrop smiles."

So feel free to criticize my ideas ruthlessly, I’ll appreciate it.

Now on a similar note here is Warren Buffett on limiting bias in your thought processes.