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Everyone always wishes they could go back in time and pick up the stocks that have done really well in recent years. But the reality is, most people, if they were given that opportunity without the hindsight they have now, would not buy those stocks - especially if they considered themselves responsible investors looking to own quality businesses at a discount.
It's funny how, no matter how well-read investors become, the market will always find a way to use what they think they know against them.
Given the rise of nominally 'Buffett-style' investing, the moat has become sacred in a way - without it, there is no point in investing, no matter the price or how good the current financials look, because a moat is the only defence there is against the future.
And yet, most people who follow this philosophy do not beat the market, and constantly miss the greatest long-term opportunities.
What's going on here? Well, the reality is, if a moat is obvious to everyone, there is little alpha in recognising it. If anything, it may be taken for granted and the risks not taken very seriously, so those projected cash flows look like they will remain healthy for longer than is truly realistic. Complacency, if not optimism, sets in.
The significant alpha, in my experience, has almost always come from stocks where 1) the general consensus was either that the company had 'no moat', or if it did have one once, it is rapidly eroding or already gone; and 2) I perceived that there was, in fact, a moat, and that the future was far less uncertain than the dominant narratives portrayed.
Ironically, this is exactly how Buffett himself picked stocks, despite everyone thinking they're emulating him by looking for moats that are already clear as day. Meanwhile, the real value is not some shiny object, but that damaged, forgotten thing covered in dust that was tossed out to make room for the shiny object.
Yet, by the time its lustre is either acquired or restored, and the stock gains admiration as 'a great investment', well - to paraphrase a famous saying - everyone will have always believed in the moat.
**Edit 1: For some reason people seem to think I'm saying that you should avoid buying high quality companies and instead buy things that are low quality and risky because they're cheap. I suppose I have to spell things out even more: my claim is that high quality companies are only 'obvious' as such to most people who look for them after that thesis has already been proven out. But the really great investors, like Buffett, who everyone thinks they're emulating by looking for these 'high quality stocks', buy these same companies when everyone else thinks their moat is non-existent or broken. I'm not sure how much clearer I can be.**
**Edit 2: People have been asking about my own positions as examples. So, the last time I bought a bunch of stocks, it was a fairly concentrated portfolio in late 2022 to early 2023, centred on GOOGL, AMZN, META, NVDA, NFLX, DPZ, and DIS. I sold DPZ and DIS early however. I also bought SPOT but then felt like that may be too risky, even though I knew the direction they were headed in, and I regret not holding. As of the last couple of weeks, I've been looking at RDDT, DUOL and SPOT again. RDDT and SPOT appear optically expensive but they are not, as they are operating well below their true earning capacity. Another tip from Buffett - don't trust PE ratios to tell you whether something is or isn't cheap.**