Look at Lots of Stocks/Horses

There seem to be many similarities between picking stocks and picking horses, so I will from time to time tell some investing stories.

I met a finance professor, Bob, that grew up in the house next to Warren Buffett in Omaha. The told the following story:

When Bob was 12 he played softball with Buffett’s son. They would go do down in Mr. Buffett’s basement early in the morning to get the equipment. Mr. Buffett would be sitting in a recliner in his non-air conditioned basement with a four foot stack of annual reports. When they dropped off the equipment that night, the stack was gone.

Buffett addressed Bob’s investing class at Creighton 20 years later. The first question was:

I want to be an analyst like you Mr. Buffett , how should I get started?

Mr. Buffett said:

There are about 5000 public companies in the U.S, start with the A’s

The clear implication from his extended answer was you have to look at them all.

This is good advice in picking stocks, I think it applies to horses as well.

Heeding Mr. Buffett’s advice I started the Fasig-Tipton’s Timonium sales catalog by looking at Hip #1 and going from there. For Ocala, I had started with short list of sires I liked, but now I will tackle the “whole enchilada”.