Ann: CYBG PLC Third Quarter 2019 Trading Update, page-113

"I would argue we are nowhere near real doom and gloom. The markets are near all time highs."

And what about CYB, the subject matter of this thread?

Is CYB:

a) also near an all-time high, like "the market"?

or

b) at an all-time low?


What it is patently clear, from your persistent questions to me about this sort of thing, is that you don't understand [*] the difference between the act of investing on the basis of undervaluation, and trying to predict the cycle of equity markets.

The difference is that, as a cycle-agnostic, value-based investor, I'm in the business of buying stakes in businesses; business that make profits providing services and/or selling goods for which there is demand, businesses that are managed on my behalf by what I think are prudent managers who are competent stewards of my capital.

What I'm not doing is buying into a nebulous thing called "the market", represented by some random squiggles on a chart.

If I was offered the opportunity to buy a privately-owned company with a view to operating and owning it for a decade (e.g., a chain of hardware stores, an accounting practice, a trucking company, a pub, a hotel, or whatever) because the owner was selling for whatever reason (maybe he/she is retiring, getting divorced, or maybe has become bored and wants to do something else), I don't assess that investment opportunity with thoughts of, "Before I buy this company, I wonder what the squiggles on the charts - which have nothing to do with this particular company I am buying - might do next week or next month or next year or the year after that".

I see absolutely no reason why that investment philosophy should change simply because the company in question happens to not be privately owned and its shares happened to exchange hands in certain marketplace for that purpose.


[*] I increasingly sense that you, despite frequently questioning me about it, don't really seek to understand it, but rather want to make some or other point about how doomed we all are. If that is the case, then I suspect your chances of convincing someone like me are very small, given that I have not been swayed despite coming across similar arguments presented by all manner of merchants of doom, for almost 30 years. I'm a bit set in my value-investor ways now, I'm afraid.