저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
애크먼은 시장 심리와 반대로 행동하라고 강조하며, 우량 기업이라도 높은 가격에 사면 좋은 수익을 내기 어렵다고 말한다. 집중 투자(10~12개 종목)와 깊은 기업 분석(SEC 공시, 실적발표 기록 5년치 검토)을 권하고, 경기침체는 과도한 레버리지가 없는 기업의 가치에 큰 영향을 주지 않는다고 본다. 가격과 가치를 구분하고, 단기 시장은 투표기계, 장기는 저울이라는 관점을 제시한다. 명확한 자산별 가격 방향 예측 발언은 없다.
다듬은 글
surviving the jungle. Uh you know, the lion shows up and everyone starts running, you run with them. That does not work well uh in markets. In fact, you generally have to do the opposite. People tend to get excited about investments when stocks are going up and they get depressed when they're going down.
And that's I think that's just inherently human. You have to reverse that. You have to get excited when things get cheaper and you got to get concerned when things get more expensive. Never invest money you can't afford to lose and where it would if you lost this this money and you know, you lose your house, you're investing money that you don't care about the price in the short term.
You know, it's money for your retirement and you take a really long-term view. That's key. Bill Ackman, one of the most well-known fund managers in the world, manages almost 24 billion dollars in assets. And today we're going to look at five very important lessons from Ackman that every investors can learn from.
So, let's begin. The kind of business we're looking for is sort of the kind of business everyone should be looking for, right? A great business. It's got a long-term trajectory of growth out into the forest, you know, even beyond the foreseeable distance, right? Those are the kind of businesses you want to own.
You want businesses that generate a lot of cash. You want businesses you can easily understand. You want businesses with these sort of huge barriers to entry where it's difficult for others to compete. You want companies that don't have to constantly raise capital. Um and these are some of the great businesses in the world.
But people have figured out that those are the great businesses. So, the problem is those companies tend to have very high stock prices and the value is generally built into the price you have to pay for the business. So, we we can't earn the kind of returns [clears throat] we want to earn for investors by paying a really high price.
Price matters a lot. You can buy the best business in the world and if you overpay, you're not going to earn particularly attractive returns. So, we get involved in cases where a great business has kind of made a big mistake or they've or you've a company that's kind of lost its way, but it's recoverable.
And that's we buy from shareholders who are disappointed, have lost confidence, selling at a low price relative to what it's worth if fixed and then we try to be helpful in fixing the company. Bill explains what makes a great business. It should have a long-term growth trajectory, generate a lot of cash, be easy to understand, have a huge barrier to entry, and ideally not require outside capital to grow.
But here's the catch. Investors already know these are the characteristics of a great business. That's why great businesses often trade at a higher valuation multiples. So whenever you get an opportunity to buy a great business at a significant lower multiple than its quality would suggest, you should not ignore it.
Why? Why not own the best 10 or 11 investments as opposed to ideas 12 through 25 or 12 through 100, which is more typical. And uh you know, I think there are very few great investments at any one time. So the ability to concentrate is an enormous and valuable asset of a strategy. Uh the problem with it is most uh it leads to bumpier returns.
And it it leads to uh more attention on on mistakes or things that aren't going well. You know, I don't know a portfolio manager that doesn't have a a stock that's down in his portfolio, right? But you don't read articles about uh I mean, we're getting an awful lot of attention for a pretty high-profile situation that's uh that's struggling.
Um but I think there's uh you know, it depends on what your business model is, but if you want to make high rates of return over a long period of time, it's hard to do that being very diversified. I mean, if you you look through the Forbes 400 wealthiest people in the world, um most of them uh made their fortune in one business or a portfolio of two businesses.
Very few made it in a portfolio of 100. So it's It's that and the other benefit allows you to run a much simpler uh investment firm. We have an eight-person investment team. Uh if we had 30 names, we couldn't manage that portfolio the way we do with a small team. By having a small team, you can hire better talent.
This is one of the most compelling arguments for owning a smaller number of stocks. Bill Ackman asked, "Why own 20-25 stocks that you don't fully understand or don't have enough time to track. Just so you can feel like you're reducing your risk. Instead, why not own 10 to 12 businesses that you can understand deeply and can follow closely?
According to Ackman's approach, if your goal is to generate higher returns over the long run, having a concentrated portfolio of your highest conviction ideas can make more sense than owning too many stocks simply for the sake of diversification. But we start with usually reading the SEC filings of companies file a 10K or annual report.
They file these quarterly reports called 10Qs. They have a proxy statement which describes kind of the governance, the board structure. Um conference call transcripts are publicly available. It's kind of very helpful to go back 5 years and kind of learn the story. You know, here's how management describes their business.
Here's what they say they're going to do. Then you can follow along to see what they do. Uh it's like a historical record of, you know, of how competent and uh truthful they are. It's a very useful device. And then of course, looking at competitors uh and thinking about, you know, who could what could dislodge this company.
Filtering and identifying great stocks is relatively easy, but the real work begins after that. Companies' presentation, annual reports, earning call transcripts, and other important information are publicly available to everyone. The key is to go beyond simply reading the latest numbers. You need to look back over several years to understand how the business has evolved.
Identify the underlying trends and develop a deeper understanding of the company. And that's where the real research begins. The value of a business, unless it's a highly levered uh very economically sensitive company, is not particularly affected [snorts] by the ons- you know, uh uh it by the event of a recession, right?
If you own a the value of a stock, right? The value of an interest in a company is the present value of the cash that business generates over its life. And if it's a business that should exist forever, well, pick Hilton, for example. Um they'll we can expect that over, you know, in in past history there's been a recession every 7 or 8 years.
Let's assume the future is the same and there's a recession every 7 or 8 years going forward. It doesn't That's kind of factored into the value of the of the enterprise. The only reason why a recession creates it destroys value is if you have a company that is highly levered. And then if revenues decline, you know, their cash flow goes negative and they kind of they can't support their debt and they go bankrupt, right?
But if you own a very well-capitalized business, I I don't think a recession has a meaningful impact. It might affect that year's revenues and cash flow, but that's just one line item in a a long spreadsheet of cash flows that you discount, if you will, into the present. There is perhaps nothing more dangerous than excessive leverage in the game of investing.
Bill Ackman emphasizes the importance of avoiding businesses that rely heavily on debt. Because when times get tough, leverage can quickly turn into major problem. When business conditions deteriorate, a highly leveraged company still has to service its debt and interest obligations. This can put enormous pressure on the business and ultimately destroy shareholder value.
So, when evaluating a business, always pay close attention to its balance sheet and how much leverage it carries. You have to understand the difference between price and value. Right? Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. And he said the stock market is here to serve you. Right? And it's a bit like the neighbor that comes by every day and makes you an offer for your house.
Makes you a stupid offer, you ignore it. Uh, makes you a great offer, you can take it. And that's the stock market. And the key is to figure out what something's worth. And you have to kind of weigh it. He talked about the difference between, you know, he said the stock market in the short term is a voting machine.
It represents speculative interests, you know, supply and demand of people uh, in the short term. But in the long term it's the stock market's a weighing machine. You know, much more accurate. It's going to tell you what something is worth. And so, if you can divine what something's worth, then you can really take advantage of the market cuz it's really here to to help you.
And that's kind of the message of the book. You probably heard this a hundred times. Price is what you pay and value is what you get. The stock market is there to serve you, not to dictate what you should do. And one of the most best ways to take advantage of the market is to understand and embrace the volatility.
Over the 52-week period, a stock can experience very large swings, sometimes moving 50% in either direction. These large price movements can create opportunities for investors who understand the underlying value of the business and are willing to act when the market gives them an attractive price.
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