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Have an individual stock idea brewing the in the back of your mind? Perhaps the recent LendingClub drama has you itching to buy a few shares of LC at under $5 a share? Above is an interesting chart that shows the distribution of total returns for individual stocks when compared to the S&P 500 index (1989-2015). It was created by Longboard Asset Management, found via Abnormal Returns.

We analyzed 14,455 active stocks between 1989 and 2015, identifying the best performing stocks on both an annualized return and total return basis. Looking at total returns of individual stocks, 1,120 stocks (7.7% of all active stocks) outperformed the S&P 500 Index by at least 500% during their lifetimes. Likewise, 976 stocks (6.8% of all active stocks) lagged the S&P 500 by at least 500%. The remaining 12,404 stocks performed above, at or below the same level as the S&P 500.

I felt that this chart shows you the psychological risks of investing in individual stocks. I’ve been dipping my toes back into individual stock investing with a very small portion of my portfolio. My general idea is to invest in some high-quality, dividend-earning stocks and thus being able to earn those dividends without paying the expense ratio of an ETF. I’d also avoid some tax-efficiency issues if I am able to hold them for very long periods as opposed to a dividend ETF that keeps changing the components of their underlying index. Here’s one of my inspirations. In other words: Buy good stocks, hold them forever.

But as the chart above shows, some of your picks will do great, and some will do horribly. Some people will tell you about their “ten-baggers” and neglect to mention the losers, while the final math will show you lagging the index. As active investors, Longboard concludes that you should focus on avoiding the underperforming assets. But I’d be wary of being so careful about avoiding losers that they miss out on the winners. (The winners often look like losers at some point… can you say Apple?)

Even if you just plan on make a few trades here and here, individual stock investing is a mental sport that takes self-discipline and a calm rationality. Very few people have the characteristics needed, even when managing their own money with no management fee drag. Charlie Munger has his own take, but also admits that only a small percentage can add value:

I think a select few – a small percentage of the investment managers – can deliver value added. But I don’t think brilliance alone is enough to do it. I think that you have to have a little of this discipline of calling your shots and loading up – if you want to maximize your chances of becoming one who provides above average real returns for clients over the long pull.

[…] I think it’s hard to provide a lot of value added to the investment management client, but it’s not impossible.

Reminder: BRK Annual Meeting Live Webcast starts Saturday, April 30th at 10am Eastern. Always wanted to attend the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting? This year, anyone can watch the Buffett and Munger Q&A session live without flying to Omaha, Nebraska. I don’t know if it will be available for later repeated viewing.

Charlie and I have finally decided to enter the 21st Century. Our annual meeting this year will be webcast worldwide in its entirety. To view the meeting, simply go to https://finance.yahoo.com/brklivestream at 9 a.m. Central Daylight Time on Saturday, April 30th. The Yahoo! webcast will begin with a half hour of interviews with managers, directors and shareholders. Then, at 9:30, Charlie and I will commence answering questions.

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Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) released their 2015 Letter to Shareholders [pdf] over the weekend. As always, the letter is written in a straightforward and approachable fashion. Even if you aren’t interested in BRK stock at all, reading the letter can be educational for individual investors of any experience level.

I’m sure many people smarter than me will offer their responses to this letter, but here are my notes.

Berkshire share value. As usual, the letter addresses the different ways to value BRK shares. First, there is the market value, as seen on any BRK stock quote. Second, there is the book value, which is an accounting term defined as total assets minus intangible assets and liabilities. Third, there is the intrinsic value, which is what Buffett believes is the true value. Buffett has repeatedly stated that BRK will buy back shares if the market value drops to 120% of book value.

Over time, this asymmetrical accounting treatment (with which we agree) necessarily widens the gap between intrinsic value and book value. Today, the large – and growing – unrecorded gains at our “winners” make it clear that Berkshire’s intrinsic value far exceeds its book value. That’s why we would be delighted to repurchase our shares should they sell as low as 120% of book value. At that level, purchases would instantly and meaningfully increase per-share intrinsic value for Berkshire’s continuing shareholders.

This suggests that Buffett believes BRK is worth signficantly more than 1.20x book value. As I write this, the BRK stock is roughly 1.3x book, and it has dropped as low as 1.25x book in January 2016. As a (tiny) shareholder, I also use this as a rough measure of whether the company is under- or over-valued (or out-of-fashion vs. in-fashion). My holdings are mostly meant as a future educational tool for my children. I don’t know how BRK will perform as compared to the S&P 500, but it is great example of a money-making machine.

Individual stock holdings. As BRK has moved from mostly holding parts of public companies to holding entire private companies, there is less for the individual stock picker to sift through. For example, you and I can no longer buy shares of Precision Castparts or BNSF Railroad directly. He is still confident in his “Big Four” investments of American Express, Coca-Cola, IBM and Wells Fargo:

These four investees possess excellent businesses and are run by managers who are both talented and shareholder-oriented. Their returns on tangible equity range from excellent to staggering. At Berkshire, we much prefer owning a non-controlling but substantial portion of a wonderful company to owning 100% of a so-so business. It’s better to have a partial interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.

Even though the outlooks for AmEx and IBM is not as positive as they were few years ago, Buffett must still view them also as reliable money-making machines. Reading through this and older letters are a great way to learn about important concepts like earnings growth, dividend payouts, and share buybacks.

Optimism. A good portion of the letter was devoted to optimism about the American economy.

It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve). As a result of this negative drumbeat, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as well as they themselves do.

That view is dead wrong: The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.

Indeed, most of today’s children are doing well. All families in my upper middle-class neighborhood regularly enjoy a living standard better than that achieved by John D. Rockefeller Sr. at the time of my birth. His unparalleled fortune couldn’t buy what we now take for granted, whether the field is – to name just a few – transportation, entertainment, communication or medical services. Rockefeller certainly had power and fame; he could not, however, live as well as my neighbors now do.

Shareholder letters from 1977 to 2015 are available free to all on the Berkshire Hathaway website. You can also purchase all of the Shareholder letters from 1965 to 2014 for only $2.99 in Amazon Kindle format. Three bucks is a very reasonable price to have an official copy forever stored in electronic format. (Updated paperback will be re-stocked in mid-April for about $20. Don’t overpay for a stale physical copy.)

The 2014 Annual Letter discussed the power of owning shares of productive businesses (and not just bonds). The 2013 Annual Letter included Buffett’s Simple Investment Advice to Wife After His Death.

There is a famous quote that Charlie Munger uses as an example of the inversion technique:

Tell me where I’m going to die, so I won’t go there.

Instead of focusing on things we should to help us, we can also simply avoid doing things that will hurt us. Don’t do drugs. Don’t gamble.

I can’t provide a clear roadmap to finding a great financial advisor. But after reading through the SSRN research paper The Market for Financial Adviser Misconduct mentioned yesterday, I certainly know what to avoid. Here’s my version of the Munger quote:

Tell me where I’m most likely to be mistreated financially, and I won’t put my money there.

These are the top 10 firms ranked according to the percentage of advisors who been disciplined for misconduct, as based on the FINRA BrokerCheck database. This list is restricted to firms with at least 1,000 advsiors.

• 20% Oppenheimer & Co.
• 18% First Allied Securities, Inc.
• 15% Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC
• 15% UBS Financial Services
• 14% Cetera Advisors, LLC
• 14% Securities America, Inc.
• 14% National Planning Corporation
• 14% Raymond James & Associates, Inc.
• 13% Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
• 13% Janney Montgomery Scott, LLC

Yes, you read that right, 1 in 5 advisors employed by Oppenheimer & Co have at least one misconduct-related disclosure in the their files. All of these firms above have incident rates roughly double that of the overall advisor population. Mix in the information we learned previously about the high likelihood of being repeat offenders, and it’s quite simple to avoid putting your hard-earned money anywhere near these firms.

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Berkshire Hathaway has released their 2014 Letter to Shareholders [pdf]. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Warren Buffett taking over the company (1965-2015), both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger wrote separate letters discussing both the past 50 years and looking forward to the next 50 years. This is in addition to normal discussion of 2014 activities and performance.

As always, the letter is written in a straightforward and approachable fashion. Even if you aren’t interested in BRK stock at all, reading the letter is very educational for investors and business owners of any experience level. Highly recommend reading the entire thing.

In terms of investing advice for the individual investor, he talks about the difference between buying shares of businesses and buying “dollars”.

The unconventional, but inescapable, conclusion to be drawn from the past fifty years is that it has been far safer to invest in a diversified collection of American businesses than to invest in securities – Treasuries, for example – whose values have been tied to American currency. That was also true in the preceding half-century, a period including the Great Depression and two world wars. Investors should heed this history. To one degree or another it is almost certain to be repeated during the next century.

Stock prices will always be far more volatile than cash-equivalent holdings. Over the long term, however, currency-denominated instruments are riskier investments – far riskier investments – than widely-diversified stock portfolios that are bought over time and that are owned in a manner invoking only token fees and commissions. That lesson has not customarily been taught in business schools, where volatility is almost universally used as a proxy for risk. Though this pedagogic assumption makes for easy teaching, it is dead wrong: Volatility is far from synonymous with risk. Popular formulas that equate the two terms lead students, investors and CEOs astray.

It is true, of course, that owning equities for a day or a week or a year is far riskier (in both nominal and purchasing-power terms) than leaving funds in cash-equivalents. […] For the great majority of investors, however, who can – and should – invest with a multi-decade horizon, quotational declines are unimportant. Their focus should remain fixed on attaining significant gains in purchasing power over their investing lifetime. For them, a diversified equity portfolio, bought over time, will prove far less risky than dollar-based securities.

One other tidbit that will surely be dissected by the media is that Charlie Munger hinted who would be the successor as CEO if/when Buffett were to step down. The two people named were Greb Abel, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and Ajit Jain, who heads Berkshire’s reinsurance business. From Munger’s letter:

Provided that most of the Berkshire system remains in place, the combined momentum and opportunity now present is so great that Berkshire would almost surely remain a better-than-normal company for a very long time even if (1) Buffett left tomorrow, (2) his successors were persons of only moderate ability, and (3) Berkshire never again purchased a large business.

But, under this Buffett-soon-leaves assumption, his successors would not be “of only moderate ability.” For instance, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel are proven performers who would probably be under-described as “world-class.” “World-leading” would be the description I would choose. In some important ways, each is a better business executive than Buffett.

I would also point out this part from Buffett’s letter:

Our directors believe that our future CEOs should come from internal candidates whom the Berkshire board has grown to know well. Our directors also believe that an incoming CEO should be relatively young, so that he or she can have a long run in the job. Berkshire will operate best if its CEOs average well over ten years at the helm. (It’s hard to teach a new dog old tricks.) And they are not likely to retire at 65 either (or have you noticed?).

Greb Abel is 52 and Ajit Jain is 63. So my prediction would be Abel, the younger person. But really, the more important part of the letter is how they explain the structure and the culture of Berkshire will endure.

(I was surprised that Buffett also recommended AirBNB for booking a room for their annual meeting in Omaha.)

Shareholder letters from 1977 to 2014 are available free to all on the Berkshire Hathaway website. You can also now purchase all of the Shareholder letters from 1965 to 2013 for only $2.99 in Amazon Kindle format (~$22 paperback). Three bucks is a very reasonable price to have an approved copy forever stored in electronic format; you used to be able to find PDFs floating around on document-sharing sites, but it looks like they have reclaimed copyright protection on them.

If you missed it, last year’s letter discussed Buffett’s Simple Investment Advice to Wife After His Death.