Buy-and-hold works - up to a point

[Musicwhiz]

Hi KopiKat and 2V,

Thanks for the explanation. I think her methods are too pure "Graham" - mechanical methods of buying and selling based on metrics, ratios and a set of numbers without accounting for the underlying businesses and the dynamic nature of companies and competition. While it has proven to work in the past, more and more information is now available which erodes the advantage which Graham used to have (not that people in his era were lazy - they just didn't have much access to information, and he was well-known for digging up details).

I do not have any issue with her personally, so I will not think she is looking for fame and fortune. She is more of a number cruncher so uses massive reams of statistics (along with superior data mining skills) to filter out companies and draw conclusions. Nothing wrong with doing that, I suppose, but back-testing may not work for the future.

Which is why I prefer to emphasize a combination of Graham, Buffett and Fisher. In addition to quantitative analysis (Graham), we need to pay a fair price for a great company (Buffett) and do scuttlebutt to assess the qualitative aspects of a business (Fisher).