To The Moon

I recently read a good article by @Tiger_chat  about the perspectives of Howard Marks, who believed that buying stocks of companies at low prices was more important than whether the company was "great", while Warren Buffet, a firm believer in value investing believed that buying stocks of a "great" company at a fair price was more important. This article resonated a lot with me, mainly because I invest in 2 share, $DBS GROUP HOLDINGS LTD(D05.SI)$   and $Grab Holdings(GRAB)$  . 

Buying Fair

For DBS, I believe this could be up Warren Buffet's alley. It's an undisputed "great" company which is one of the "darlings" of the STI. It is making profit, even in a downtrend and distributes dividends every quarter of $0.36. For me, when I first invested in DBS, I was excited. Everyone said it was a good stock and my first purchase was soon rewarded with green (increase in stock price). For a while. When I bought it at $32, things looked rosy. I continued to accumulate as I was very new then, not knowing that it has reached it peak at $37. Then it started to fall. I lost quite a bit and DBS never reached its peak again despite it being one of the best stocks in Singapore. This was because of no small part of economic conditions. I learnt then, that the entry price was extremely important. But wait, so it is better to buy low or buy fair? Well, for this stock, while I had hoped to buy it low (below $32), it never reached that point for quite a while. So I went with buying Fair, at around $33. Did it work? Well, today, this strategy for DBS seems to be working for me. Thus, I would agree with Warren on this.

Buy Low 

For Grab, a lot of people would disagree that this is fair company. To be "fair", Grab has been making a loss. But I want to acknowledge that it is moving towards profitability during this downturn and its results does show. It's not great or even good, but my opinion is that it fair. Now, I believe that buying low in this instance for Grab is important, especially now when its at one of its highest prices in 52 weeks. It's performing very, very well but I am cautious because it could tank. Its not very volatile and I'm secretly hoping that it will hit $4. But I cannot let that hope blind me with optimism. I must be prepared for a large dip which is why I think buying low makes sense. I will go with Howard with this.

So in conclusion, I think it depends on the company and I think both of them are right. They are both richer than me anyway so who am I to say they are wrong. More importantly, do read @Tiger_chat  's article. It's a good read which inspired me.

@TigerStars  @Tiger_chat