저자: JoelGreenblatt · 외국인
요약 보기
Greenblatt는 자신의 가장 큰 투자 교훈으로 1999년 '자본가치 절반에 거래되는 좋은 사업' 투자 사례를 소개하고, 가장 큰 포지션은 수익을 가장 많이 낼 종목이 아니라 손실 위험이 가장 낮은 종목이라고 설명한다. 실패 사례로는 2001년 9·11 이후 트레이드쇼 회사 ComX에서 레버리지와 영업레버리지로 큰 손실을 본 경험을 든다. 출연자는 실수를 두려워하지 말고 집중과 차별화된 사고를 해야 한다고 강조한다. 두 번째 발언자는 'Dare to be great' 메모를 인용해 남과 다르게 행동해야 초과성과가 가능하며 틀릴 용기도 필요하다고 말한다. 영상 전반은 특정 자산의 단기 가격 예측이 아니라 투자 철학과 교훈에 관한 내용이다.
다듬은 글
If you look back over your career, can you can you talk about a home run that sticks out? Uh, how did you find it? How did you build conviction? Oh, uh, well, I can think of one that was actually the inspiration for the, uh, value investors club. Uh, we were just running our own capital. Uh, we ran outside capital for 10 years and we returned all our outside capital.
I didn't take outside capital again till 2009. um to run directly. Anyway, so uh this was during a period where we run weren't running outside uh capital and uh one of my and so we were just looking for good ideas for ourselves and one of the uh we had figured out one of the best investments I had ever seen and it was a the reason it was so great was it was uh it was a company selling at half its cash value with a great business attached.
Okay. And uh usually when I size positions, it doesn't have so much to do uh my largest positions are not the ones I think I'm going to make the most money from. My largest positions are the ones I don't think I'm going to lose money in. Uh so that I can buy a lot of that without taking much risk. And if there's some optionality, meaning it could it could go up.
And this had everything. This I was buying at half its cash value with a good business attached. It was a complicated capital structure uh that people couldn't figure out because it was relatively new and and people hadn't seen it, but if you did, that's what you were buying. You you were buying something at half its cash value with a good business.
So, obviously, we bought a lot of that. And we thought, "Oh, we're so smart. We're one of the only people out there uh who's found this." And then my partner found on a Yahoo message board of all places uh someone uh who had figured this out in all its complicated glory. And uh funny story uh the gentleman who figured this out actually was working at a supermarket at the time.
He was just a really smart guy and it a light bulb went off and we sort of said, "Wow, there's intelligent life out there. Wouldn't it be wouldn't it be great if we can put together a group of people who could talk and people at the time this was 1999 were looking for millions of eyeballs on the internet and you know whatever they were talking about and I thought the internet was great to like have little meetings with people who were all over the country at different times or all over the world and and you could sort of have a little club.
I was always fascinated with that idea of an investment club. So we actually he was one of the first members of the value investors club and he got the idea of could we attract smart people to share ideas. That was that was the deal. It was free to join but you had to share your good ideas. And this gave us the idea that it wasn't just in the normal hunting places that you could find really smart people who did good work.
So that was a really good one. Half its cash value and uh with a good business attached. And it was really because it was a cap a complicated capital structure. uh the the I wouldn't call my worst investment, but I'd say my most disastrous investment. I don't know. Anyway, uh I've had a bunch of uh my partner Rob Goldstein, who joined me in 1989, always joke uh that, you know, if we worked for someone else over the last 15 years, they would have fired us about eight times, you know.
So, you ha you have to be willing to, I guess, make mistakes and and you can't really avoid it. And so, uh, our worst one was probably we actually, uh, bought, uh, through a spin-off a company, uh, that actually owned ComX, which used to be a computer trade show and and it was the biggest one. And we were actually able to create it before uh, the spin-off for about $3 a share.
And it was going to sell some new shares at $6. And that had been announced. But yet we could create it by buying the parent and shorting another piece and creating what was left for about $3. So all good so far. But we actually fell in love with the business. Uh what I loved about the business uh was that uh they ran this trade show in Las Vegas and you could rent all the trade space you wanted in Las Vegas at the time and it was available at about $2 a square foot and they could rerent it at $62 a square foot.
So, uh, whenever the trade show grew, they would spend another $2 and get a $62 contribution. Um, and so we fell in love with the operating dynamics of this business. And the the stock actually went from $3, uh, it went, uh, they sold some more stock at six and the stock actually went to 12. And we had a really large position at $3.
The reason for that is that we thought we could get out right away at six. We did not get out right away at 6 because we fell in love with the business. It went to 12. So, it sounds good so far. Uh but then unfortunately after uh shortly after about uh September 9th uh uh 2001 uh the the company bought another trade show uh and borrowed a lot of money.
And then after September 11th, no one wanted to travel at all. And uh both um trade shows really went downhill and and everyone knows about financial leverage meaning you know hey you borrow a lot of money you pay your money you take your chances you know you're put up a dollar you borrow nine you know that's a risky investment.
So, this is how I learned about operating leverage, which is when you lay out another $2 and collect 62, when the sales go down, right? Uh, when you lose $62 in revenue, 60 of your profits just evaporated and it drops immediately to the bottom line. That's called operating leverage. So, that was my lesson in operating leverage.
The stock, uh, I think I got out at a little over one or so. So um you know things happen you know this it's a lesson in concentration it's a lesson in uh operating leverage I've learned a lot of things and and I can still safely say I'm always learning I'm always making a new mistake I'm trying not to make the same ones but the same ones usually have a little different face on them.
You're really making the same one but you know it presented in a little different way and you didn't notice it and uh you would go make that mistake again. And so I guess advice would be don't be shy about making mistakes because you will anyway. So well I think that's very important what Joel just said.
I want everybody in the audience to take cognizance of it. Um I wrote a memo in April called dare to be great. And basically it said if you want to be exceptional as an investor you have to dare to be great. Everybody here is willing to be great. But to be great you have to be different because if you think the same as everybody else you'll make the same actions.
If you take the same actions, you'll have the same performance. You certainly can't be exceptional if you follow the common course. So to be exceptional, you have to be different. You also have to dare to be wrong. And nobody bats a thousand. The best baseball history hitter in history got four trips, four hits every 10 times to the plate, right?
Some investors can do a little better than that, but nobody bats a thousand. And you know, Joel mentioned that he could have been fired eight times. And uh I had I'm a very kind boss, so I didn't I I let myself stay. And I I had lunch today with a guy who works for for Berkshire Hathaway. Um and we were talking about what makes Warren successful.
And I said one of the things that makes him successful, he's not afraid of getting fired. Uh but very few people have that luxury. And uh the the question is for those of us who work in the world where we can be fired, if not by our employers, then by our clients, will we still take the chance and back our ideas that they're no sure things?
Uh will you back the things that have a chance of being wrong? Then I think you have to take that
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