Home > The Magazine > Cartoons

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Investment: Stock-picking

Remember the wisdom of Keynes and Mark Twain

Anthony Bolton

Wednesday, 6th June 2007

John Maynard Keynes said that picking shares was like a beauty contest where ‘it’s important to choose not who you think is the prettiest girl, but who the judges will think is the prettiest girl’. One of the key lessons I’ve learnt over the last 30 years or so of being an investment manager is that, although perception and reality are both factors in choosing investments, perception is probably the more important. When everyone thinks the shares of a company are unattractive, this can often create a great investment opportunity — but investments can be riskier when everyone has fallen for their ‘beauty’. This is at the heart of my contrarian approach: buying the stocks I think are misvalued and paying little attention to the stock market index weightings which guide the majority of investors.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Anthony Bolton | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Shared Opinion

Hugo Rifkind

If there really is a secret Zionist brotherhood running the world, why aren’t I a member?

Slow life

Alex James

Life begins

Life lessons

Kate Chisholm

Talking to my dentist, as one does, we discover a mutual enthusiasm for Radio Three’s Composer of the Week (Monday to Friday) and especially its presenter, Donald Macleod.

Brown bets the farm

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR) was one of the most arresting political events of modern times.

Sarkozy’s dream of taming America is doomed

Irwin Stelzer

The American model of lightly regulated capitalism may be in disrepute, says Irwin Stelzer. But the French President’s ambition is deluded

I will always defend a big spender like J.M. Keynes

Nancy Dell�Olio

Nancy Dell’Olio makes an impassioned case for Keynesian economics as the necessary remedy for the global crisis. It is to the Cambridge economist that we should turn once more

Why I’ll never be Warren Buffett

Ross Clark

Ross Clark on investment

Strictly Come Dancing is not the BBC’s core broadcasting

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle — a former editor of the Today programme — says that the Corporation must stop pretending to be democratic if it is to keep the licence fee. Unashamed elitism is the only chance that the Beeb has in the new media world