Portfolio allocation, page-35

@hcosah

"My observation though is that the most successful wealth builders are highly concentrated"

I'm tempted to think the same, but I suspect there's a lot of survivorship bias going on there. Business builders, as distinct from market practitioners, essentially have no choice but to put their heart and soul into 1 (or 2?) businesses. Yes, when it works out it can be very successful. What you are not seeing, is all the many who did not achieve stratospheric success. Remember, there have been many very successful investors who have diversified enormously. Particularly notable here were Peter Lynch and John Templeton. The very father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, was highly diversified, most of his life, I believe. There is no inconsistency between being highly diversified, and being true to a 'value' mindset.Evenb Buffett was fairly diversified when he invested in South Korea (I believe). Finally, I refer you to a current young investor, that I believe is highly skilled, rational and follows a very diversified approach: https://lt3000.blogspot.com/2018/01/finding-investment-ideas-breadth-over.html.


"BTW have you noticed that there has been a bit of dissociation (fund managers included) going on with some value investors about the influence Buffet has had on their investment styles? I think this stems from the huge amount of Buffet quotes that are recycled ad nauseum."

I suspect we may be starting to see a style shift. Buffett has attracted so many copy-cats, that they are starting to give 'the method' (which is in itself a simplistic categorisation) a bad name. It will soon be trendy to openly eschew Buffett. At that point, I suspect 'moaty' businesses will be more fruitful to the independent minded investor.

"Looks like we went through a similar mental process when all was crashing around us, hope it worked out well for you. Never time to rest on the laurels of course it could all happen again."

Time will tell. Funnily enough, one of the takeaways from this crisis, for me, was that there is definite safety in diversification - you never know what industry/sector/geography a crisis might hit. I forgot to mention this at my prior post.

Yes, it could happen again. The good thing about deploying capital amidst panic, is that it's a time when prices are assuming an exceptionally bleak future. So bleak that when the near term eventually comes around (like now), the actual future, bad as it looks, is unlikely to be as bad as what was previously assumed. As such, as I have deployed my dosh, I do indeed now plan to 'rest on my laurels'.