The real Buffett： only like cheap stocks？ Don’t like to add leverage？ Neither!

　　For well-known stocks other than Coca-Cola and Xishi Candy, Buffett is not a long-term investor as everyone imagined. Investors have always thought that Buffett’s investment style is very scattered, but on the contrary, Buffett’s top five stock positions in his portfolio can account for more than 70% of his entire portfolio. Decentralization can preserve wealth, but centralization will increase wealth —

　　Just after the May Day holiday in 2019, the Warren Buffett shareholders’ meeting held in Omaha, a small American town, attracted many investors to queue up for admission not far from Wan Li. Since the first general meeting of shareholders in 1964, the "stock god" has basically not let investors down. In this year’s six-hour question-and-answer session, the scope of the questions involved investment, science and technology, human nature and so on. Buffett admits that he is no longer the kind of "value" investor in his early days. Many of his investment income comes from some more "expensive" companies. What is the strategic change of the stock god? Or have investors always misunderstood Buffett?

　　Why don’t you favor bargains anymore?

　　Buffett’s teacher is Benjamin Graham, the author of Securities Analysis. Graham’s most famous investment philosophy is "value investment". One of the most important characteristics of the so-called value investment is to buy a company that you are optimistic about at a cheaper price. Buffett himself described his investment philosophy as such: he likes to buy "cigarette butt" stocks.

　　What do you mean by "cigarette butt stock"? For example, investors see a cigarette butt that is about to burn out on the road, and pick it up when no one picks it up. Similarly, buying cheap stocks that no one buys is also called the "cigarette butt stock" strategy. This strategy can be seen everywhere in Buffett’s early investments.

　　In the 1980s, when Buffett bought Coca-Cola, the price was horribly low. But since he met his partner Munger in the 1970s, Buffett began to change, not just pursuing low-priced stocks. Xishi Candy is the most representative case of his change in investment philosophy.

　　In Munger’s words, if it is a very good bid, it is worthwhile to pay a little more! Therefore, the company Xishi Candy was acquired at a price higher than the book value, and it succeeded.

　　Has Buffett’s concept of value investment changed? Xia Chun, chief research officer of Noah Holdings, believes that high-quality stocks contribute the most to Buffett’s investment income, followed by large-cap stocks with little fluctuation, and then the so-called value stocks.

　　For well-known stocks other than Coca-Cola and Xishi Candy, Buffett is not a long-term investor as everyone imagined. If the holding period of Buffett’s traded stocks is arranged from short to long, the holding period ranked in the median is actually not long. Many of his transactions are completed in one year, and sometimes the holding period is only three months.

　　Buffett’s value investment concept is also called "deep value investment", which is completely different from the way of only looking at the price and buying assets at low prices.

　　Xia Chun believes that companies with low profits or even negative profits may be easily sought after by the market because they are cheap and have great potential. However, a truly high-quality company’s share price may not be cheap. As long as the current high-quality company’s share price is not so outrageous, it may bring benefits to investors in the future, which is the essence of Buffett’s stock selection strategy.

　　In Buffett’s own words, the "value" in value investment is not an absolute low P/E ratio, but a comprehensive consideration of various indicators of buying stocks. For example, whether it is the business that investors understand, future development potential, existing revenue, market share, tangible assets, cash holdings, market competition, etc.

　　Yang Delong, executive general manager of Qianhai Open Source Fund Management Company, believes that Buffett used to mainly invest in consumer stocks and financial stocks, but rarely invested in technology stocks, which allowed him to avoid the bursting of the American science and technology bubble in 2000, but at the same time missed the great development of technology stocks in recent ten years. Buffett corrected it in time and invested in technology stocks such as IBM, Apple and Amazon.

　　Summarize Buffett’s investment philosophy in one sentence: "If I want to buy high-quality stocks, I will definitely buy them when they are discounted." There are two key points in this sentence: first, it must be a good stock, and second, the buying time must be at a discount. It can be seen that Buffett’s value investment philosophy is not simply to choose cheap stocks and poor performance stocks, but to pay attention to those stocks with high quality and good development prospects. The two strategies and two kinds of wisdom of stock selection and timing are contained in it.

　　Decentralization or centralization

　　Leverage, fund allocation and short-term speculation … … Will these familiar words of domestic A-share market investment be found in Buffett’s dictionary? Buffett once said, "The only way for smart people to die is to add leverage." In the usual thinking, Buffett is a value investor and should disdain to use these speculative strategies, but it is not.

　　Xia Chun said that from 1980 to 2006, Buffett’s most common stock holding period was one year, and the second common holding period was three months. The label of "long-term investor" that ordinary investors labeled Buffett was not completely accurate.

　　Xia Chun believes that Buffett is very opposed to ordinary families adding leverage, borrowing money for stock trading or allocating funds for stock trading. However, Buffett himself is very good at adding leverage, and Buffett’s leverage is as high as 1.7 times.

　　In addition to leverage, another big problem that ordinary investors are struggling with is whether to "put eggs in different baskets". Or concentrate on investment?

　　Investors have always thought that Buffett’s investment style is very scattered, but on the contrary, Buffett’s investment is basically concentrated in a few stocks. The top five stock positions in Buffett’s portfolio can account for more than 70% of his entire portfolio. At least, there are only five stocks left in his entire position. Buffett advises everyone to diversify their investments, but he is a master of centralized investment. He believes that extensive diversification is generally used when investors are not fully aware of what they want to do. Decentralization can preserve wealth, but centralization will increase wealth.

　　In addition to Coca-Cola and other well-known secondary market stocks, Buffett is actually a master of private equity investment. Over the past 10 years, Buffett has criticized private equity and hedge fund managers on many occasions, so investors generally think that Buffett doesn’t like private equity investment and hedge fund trading. But few people know that Buffett left his legacy to start a business by trading hedge funds, mainly buying and selling stocks and bonds of listed companies.

　　Now, most of Buffett’s Berkshire investments are non-listed companies. Buffett is more like a private equity fund manager. In his portfolio, the investment of non-listed companies accounts for about 70%.

　　Xia Chun said, "Whether you use speculative strategies such as leverage or enter the field of high-risk non-listed companies’ equity investment, you must have enough key knowledge, and at the same time, you should judge high-quality companies accurately."

　　Is Buffett’s strategy suitable for A shares?

　　At the Buffett Shareholders’ Meeting in 2018, Buffett maintained a positive and optimistic attitude towards China’s economy and market. At this shareholders’ meeting, Buffett once again said: "China is a big market, and we like big markets. It is very important for China and the United States to get along well. Before China had a new policy of opening wider to the outside world, we were already in contact with China. Berkshire has bought some China stocks before, but the number is not particularly large, and some bigger deployments may be made in the next 15 years. "

　　So, is Buffett’s strategy ineffective if he gets A shares? According to the retracement calculation of Li Xunlei, chief economist of Qilu Asset Management under Zhongtai Securities, according to Buffett’s stock selection principle, A-share investment may also get high returns. Buffett stressed that companies with high ROE (return on net assets) must be selected and bought at a low PE (price-earnings ratio), believing that the valuation is relatively reasonable when PE and ROE are similar (for example, PE is 20 times and roe is 20%). According to these indicators, the net value of "high ROE+ low PE" strategy in the A-share market has increased by 246% in the past 10 years, while the Shanghai and Shenzhen 300 index has increased by 66% in the same PEriod. Most of the strategies have achieved positive excess returns, which shows that the stock selection standard of "high ROE+ low pe" is generally effective in the past 10 years.

　　Li Xunlei said that some people misunderstand that value investment is not acclimatized in A-shares, perhaps because in the impression of many A-share investors, A-shares are greatly influenced by policies and have a high degree of irrationality, so value investment may not be applicable in A-shares. This may be related to the fact that most people pay too much attention to the "bull stocks" with outstanding short-term performance. If we focus on the annual super bull stocks, we can hardly see the shadow of value stocks, which may be the reason why value investment is not acclimatized in the impression of ordinary investors. In addition, because individual investors pay too much attention to short-term returns, they generally pay attention to the so-called "stock-active" stocks with greater stock price fluctuations, especially those with daily limit, and may not be interested in value stocks with relatively stable performance and stock price.

　　At present, many investors believe that Buffett’s success cannot be replicated, but Xia Chun thinks that this is not the case. American regulators require large institutional investors to announce changes in their positions every quarter. Every time Buffett announced the change of his position, not many people followed suit, because everyone thought that the stock price had been reflected in the market. In the future, more and more investors will truly imitate and apply Buffett’s stock selection method. (Economic Daily China Economic Net reporter Zhou Lin)