Book Report: Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Phil Fisher

As I tackle my large list of investment books to read, I will write little summaries in my blog to remind myself of the important messages in the book. I hope these little crib sheets are useful for others who may not have time to read the book.

This is my report on Philip Fisher's Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. I highly recommend reading this book along with Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor. Fisher stresses finding exceptional growth stocks that are selling at reasonable prices. Philip Fisher is probably second only to Benjamin Graham in shaping how value investors like Warren Buffet approach stocks. His investing career began with the great crash in 1929 and included many bear and bull markets. In his approach to investing, he stressed doing deep research by employing the "scuttlebutt" approach to find growth stocks. Scuttlebutt is the use of many different sources to find information about the company, the management, and the products. He used such inventive methods to find answers to his 15 points of quality in every stock he analyzed.

Here lists the 15 things Phil Fisher looks for in common stocks:
1) Do the products have enough market potential to increase sales for the next few years?
2) Does management have the drive to continue increasing total sales through innovation?
3) How effective is the conpany's R&D relative to its size?
4) Is the sales and marketing organization above-average?
5) Does the company have good profit margins?
6) How is the company improving profit margins?
7) Does the company treat workers well?
8) Does the company treat executives well?
9) Does the company have a deep management bench?
10) Does the company control cost and accounting well?
11) Does the company stand out amongst competitors in any way (particular to industry)?
12) Is the company long-range forward-looking?
13) Is the company going to dilute shareholders?
14) Does the company speak freely of the good as well as the bad?
15) Does the management have impeccable integrity?

He also gives a few short lists what investors should not do:
1) Buy promotional companies.
2) Ignore good stocks that are thinly traded or over-the-counter.
3) Buy stocks based on tone of annual reports.
4) Assume a high price already discounts all future growth.
5) "quibble over quarters and eighths."
6) di-worsify.
7) Be afraid to buy in times of political uncertainty.
8) Let what doesn't matter influence one's decisions.
9) Anchor oneself to price target even if the stock is undervalued at current prices.
10) Follow the crowd.

In the third part of the book, entitled Developing an Investment Philosophy, Fisher gives us concrete applications of the principles described in the book. I found this part of the book to be the most useful as a few of the stories and lessons resonated with me. IMHO, it's always easier to learn from examples than from lists. In this section, there was a story of a client who wouldn't buy a stock above his arbitrarily set price and subsequently missed a 50% return because it always traded fractionally above his buy-below price. I similarly missed Mastercard this year because I was not willing to pay more than $46. This was my largest mistake of this year, an error of omission.

Fisher also encourages investors to not time markets by making big moves into and out of equities. He believes growth stocks chosen carefully will ride out down-markets and staying committed to such stocks would prevent missing out on its imminent recovery. He quite accurately predicts that most market-timers will not repurchase stocks once it has started rising due to psychological anchoring to the lowest price. Even though the current market condition appears to be priced for perfection (or at least a soft-landing), I will follow Fisher's advice and stay the course. My positions should allow me to outperform even with a downturn.