Street Capitalist: Event Driven Value Investments

For those of you that don’t remember – when I started this blog back in 2007 Fairfax Financial (PINK:FRFHF/ TSE:FFH) was my largest holding. It was in September and I was nervous about the potential for the sub-prime issue to spread to the rest of the economy. Fairfax represented a really unique opportunity because I purchased shares not only at 1/2 book value but also received the benefits of their credit default swap portfolio which was positioned against major Wall Street financial institutions. In a way, I had an undervalued company which also gave me the ability to hedge against the worst financial crisis in recent history.

Today, Gregory Zuckerman has a wonderful article on Fairfax Financial in the Wall Street Journal:

As more investors worry about the possibility of deflation—or a sustained period of falling prices that could cripple stocks—Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. has spent nearly $200 million to buy derivative contracts wagering on a decline in the consumer-price index, an inflation indicator. The trade could lead to huge profits if deflation occurs.

Fairfax purchased some of the derivative investments in the first three months of the year, when few fretted about deflation and the cost of the contracts was cheap. It added more in the second quarter.

The derivatives now are catching the attention of some on Wall Street. They have gained more than 50% in value since Fairfax made its original purchases from a number of banks, generating paper profits of more than $100 million.

The Fairfax bet, which aims to protect $22 billion of Fairfax’s investment portfolio, comes as investors grapple with a particularly challenging environment, with the economy fragile and stock indexes struggling. Few investors are willing to make big wagers on deflation, despite its potential, with many skeptical any deflationary period would last long. The U.S. hasn’t experienced an extended bout of deflation since the Great Depression.

Firm Makes Bold Bet on Falling Prices (WSJ)

With The Greatest Trade Ever and The Big Short, investors went looking for cheap insurance against seemingly improbable events. Today though, that insurance isn’t so cheap. The massive waves of CDOs that were originated in the lead up to the financial crisis helped make a market filled with inexpensive CDSs. That isn’t true for today. To me, insurance is worthless if it is overpriced. Fairfax on the other hand is once again demonstrating their shrewdness. Spending only $174M to protect a $22B portfolio sounds like a good bet:

The Fairfax team believes U.S. households have only begun reducing borrowing and increasing savings, a trend it expects will lead to less spending, higher unemployment and deflation.

Fairfax paid $174 million in upfront fees to protect $22 billion of its investment portfolio against the possibility of deflation over the next decade. In exchange, Fairfax will receive a payment amounting to the drop in CPI below 2%—the level of inflation when Fairfax bought its contracts—multiplied by the $22 billion.

If deflation averages 2% annually over the next 10 years, Fairfax’s contracts would rise in value the equivalent of 4% of $22 billion, or $880 million, each year over the next decade, according to traders familiar with Fairfax’s trades.

In that scenario, if Fairfax holds on to its investments during the 10-year period, it would reap nearly $9 billion from its $174 million investment.

The company wouldn’t get anything for its bet if inflation turns out to be higher than 2% over the next 10 years.

Right now there is a debate about whether we will experience deflation or inflation. It is my thinking that we will follow deflation briefly before inflating our way out of it — moving us into a period of inflation. That seems contrary to Watsa’s bet. But the thing to keep in mind is that Prem Watsa, Fairfax’s CEO, needs to protect his investment portfolio.

Most people don’t realize this, but investment income is what keeps most P&C insurance companies afloat. From 1975 to 2009 there have only been 5 years where the P&C insurance industry generated positive underwriting income. Over the same period insurers had an underwriting deficit of $445B. To make matters worse, we’re in a period of abnormally low interest rates. Most insurers have the bulk of their investment portfolios in fixed income securities. That income is likely to face some downward pressure given today’s yield curve. Some insurers try to chase better yields by going into munis, but I’d be cautious. Some municipalities have rather high budget deficits making the chance of default not entirely unlikely. One might find good short candidates by going through the investment portfolios of different insurers and finding the ones with the worst positioned investment portfolios that are coupled with bad underwriting.

So when I see Prem betting $174M to protect a $22B portfolio against deflation, I don’t necessarily take that as Prem betting the house. $174 million is only about 0.8% of the portfolio. I see this as a way to make sure Fairfax’s investment portfolio, which is crucial to the company’s survival, is protected. As long as their counter parties in the trade (Citibank Canada and Deutsche Bank) survive. It’s entirely possible that the team at Hamblin-Watsa will seek out other derivatives to help them hedge against other adverse macro-economic scenarios. I think that as long as the trades are cheap and offer asymmetric returns, Fairfax will probably consider them.

What does this mean for individual investors like you and me? I think that if right now, you see Fairfax as being undervalued without the derivative trade working out – you might want to consider it for your portfolio. Worst case: you have a cheap insurance company run by one of the best capital allocators in the insurance business. Best case: you have a cheap insurance company that should help hedge your portfolio against deflation. Most individual investors are unable to purchase the kinds of hedges that Fairfax employs, so this is one way to work around that. I would not buy solely on the derivatives trade because we don’t know how long it will take for Fairfax to actually realize their gains (if they realize any at all).

At Street Capitalist we’ve focused a bit on restaurants and retailers as of late – in particular we’ve highlighted some of the quirks to look out for in their accounting. It looks like we’re going to see some changes to how lease obligations are accounted for:

Investors brace for dramatic accounting change. That sounds like a fantasy headline from one of the great geeky professions, but it’s almost true. New rules announced on Tuesday on lease accounting will increase the average company’s debt load by 58 per cent, according to PwC and Erasmus University.

The issue: with the right kind of lease contract, companies currently keep assets off the balance sheet that are both durable and vital to operations – for example airlines’ aircraft and retailers’ stores. But accountants are on the way to banning these operating leases. Almost all leases will be considered financial, so both the assets and the corresponding discounted present value of future payments will be on the balance sheet. The result: the average retailer can expect a three-fold increase in debt levels. For Tesco, an extra £15bn of lease liabilities will be included into a pool barely £200m deep.

The results of the new rule, a joint project of the International Accounting Standards Board and the US’s Financial Accounting Standards Board, may surprise many investors. But not lenders and credit rating agencies, which already make similar calculations. They will have to decide whether the new measure of the value of leases is better than their existing rule of thumb, multiplying rental expense by seven. PwC believes the official measure of the liability will be lower in more than nine out of 10 cases.

Lease Accounting (FT Lex)

PWC has a report (PDF / Google Docs Viewer) which explains these changes in greater detail.

If you’ve been following the blog lately, one of the trends you will have noticed is the increasing amount of attention I’ve been giving to large cap blue chip stocks. I’ll be the first to tell you that these are not exciting companies. There is no event driven catalyst. But as best in class companies, they remain cheap and pay out strong dividend yields. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) is one that I’ve constantly talked about on here. The story is all rather simple – you are getting a best in class business at a 8.7% earnings yield and 3.7% dividend yield. Yesterday, I saw in the Berkshire Hathaway filing that Buffett has been a buyer as well:

OMAHA (AP) — Berkshire Hathaway partly rebuilt the stake in Johnson & Johnson it had reduced in the last two years to raise cash for other investments, and increased its investment in Wal-Mart Stores in the second quarter.

Berkshire, the holding company run by Warren E. Buffett, detailed its $46.4 billion stock holdings Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The document revealed several changes in the company’s portfolio from March 31 to June 30, including decreases in Kraft Foods, ConocoPhillips, Procter & Gamble and M&T Bank. Berkshire also increased its stakes in Becton Dickinson & Company, the Nalco Holding Company and Sanofi-Aventis. The biggest change was in its Johnson & Johnson stake, which grew to 41.3 million shares at the end of June, from 23.9 million shares in March. In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Buffett sold some of its stock in the company to help pay for other investments.

Berkshire held 64.3 million shares of Johnson & Johnson at the end of 2007.

Buffett Filing Shows Details of Holdings (AP)

Over the last few quarters I saw Buffett reducing his exposure to JNJ. I figured this was because he needed to raise his cash balance in his portfolio due to the preferred share deals he struck during the crisis and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe acquisition.

With most of that over, I think he is rebuilding his JNJ stake for a few reasons. One, JNJ is large enough to provide the kind of liquidity that is necessary for Buffett to increase his stake without distorting the stock price. Two, JNJ pays a heavy dividend yield that creates cash flow for Buffett to redeploy elsewhere. It’s much better than cash or most of his fixed income options. Finally, JNJ has the kind of long term prospects that Buffett likes in a business. They make products that people will need for a long time. This is a company that managed to survive even the Great Depression. There aren’t a whole lot of companies still around that can boast that fact. That does not mean JNJ or any other large cap blue chip is impervious to sharp market draw downs. Typically, these stocks will fall just like everything else. Sometimes the fall is a little less pronounced because capital flees riskier stocks and enters into some of these more defensive names.

On the credit side of things, JNJ seems to be doing well. The company just placed 10 year bonds at historically low rates:

Johnson & Johnson sold $1.1 billion of bonds at the lowest interest rates on record for 10-year and 30-year securities amid surging investor demand for the highest- rated corporate debt.

The drugmaker, in the first offering by a nonfinancial AAA rated company in 15 months, sold $550 million of 2.95 percent, 10-year notes and the same amount of 4.5 percent, 30-year bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the lowest coupons for those maturities on record, according to Citigroup Inc. data going back to 1981.

“Even though some faith in the rating agencies has been blown, the triple-A is still sacred,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist and economist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia.

…In J&J’s most recent debt sale, it sold $900 million of 5.15 percent, 10-year notes that paid 103 basis points more than similar-maturity Treasuries and $700 million of 5.85 percent, 30-year bonds at a 113 basis-point spread in June 2008, Bloomberg data show.

J&J Sells $1.1 Billion Of Debt At Record-Low Rates (Bloomberg)

So why might JNJ be undervalued? I think that with all the analyst attention JNJ garners, a sort of short term mindset comes into play. JNJ had a few recalls which reduced sales and in turn forced analysts to lower their estimates. I see these as short term problems, the company has dealt with product recalls in the past. If the company can prove that they can resume their sales growth or simply boost their dividend, I could see the stock begin to trade back up towards its highs from the last few years.

Something good to watch over the weekend whenever you get a chance. Physicist Richard Feynman was truly gifted as one of those geniuses who is able to describe his work and field in a manner that is easily understandable by ordinary people.

This weekend had two articles on deflation put out by the WSJ and NYTimes. It’s interesting to see the increasing frequency of deflation mentioned in the news. I think that it creates interesting problems for an investor because you never really hear about how to invest in a deflationary environment. Warren Buffett has written extensively on inflation but I cannot recall any letters that go into detail on deflation. That’s probably because deflationary environments are so rare. Both articles provide us with some perspective though.

First up is Paul J. Lim’s Afraid of Deflation? Try Some Medicine (NYTimes):

Late last month, Jeremy Grantham, the chief investment strategist at GMO, an investment firm based in Boston, issued a warning about deflation after worrying for months that inflationary pressures were brewing. Mr. Grantham told GMO clients recently that as the recovery has slowed, “downward pressure on prices from weak wages and weak demand seems to me now to be much the larger factor.”

In doing so, he joined a growing list of prominent analysts — including William H. Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pimco — who’ve raised concerns that consumption may be postponed and growth thwarted if price declines occur throughout the economy.

Long periods of deflation are quite rare. In fact, before Japan’s on-again, off-again experience with deflation starting in the 1990s, you have to go all the way back to the Great Depression to find another sustained bout of this trend in the developed world.

One of the issues with deflation is it’s difficult to pick the right historical frame of reference. Japan is brought up the most and I think Richard Koo’s book Lessons From Japan’s Great Recession is regarded as one of the best books on the subject. But some investors don’t even think that Japan will be the right playbook:

Strategists who’ve expressed concerns about deflation aren’t necessarily predicting a return to protracted, Depression-era downward price spirals. “We’re certainly not positioning for a Japan-like scenario,” said Ben Inker, a colleague of Mr. Grantham’s who is GMO’s head of asset allocation.

Robert D. Arnott, chairman of the asset management firm Research Affiliates in Newport Beach, Calif., said that while a brief bout of modest deflation was a threat in the short run, inflation — or rising prices that eat away at consumers’ purchasing power — remained the bigger long-term menace.

He said that growing fears over deflation made it more likely that policy makers would overreact in their attempts to stimulate growth in the economy. And that, in turn, means that “inflation is still what you have to worry about down the road,” he said.

The investors profiled offer a variety of ways to protect your portfolio against deflation. These include long-term government bonds, TIPS, cash, high quality dividend paying stocks, and fixed income securities from companies without highly leveraged balance sheets. I really like the idea of increasing your cash allocation when you start to get worried. That dry powder can be immensely useful when it comes to investing in companies at deep discounts. Whenever the market has a major downturn, its the investors that have a lot of cash who can profit. Moreover, I think that being willing to increase your cash allocation helps you think about the overall valuation of the market. Sometimes, people get so fixated on staying fully invested that they will relax their standards and buy stocks that aren’t really cheap. This behavior leaves you without any real margin of safety in case you’ve missed something in your analysis or if some kind of externality shocks the market.

Then there is Jane J. Kim and Eleanor Laise’s article How to Beat Deflation (WSJ):

Deflation is generally bad news for stocks, since a period of falling prices and weak demand tends to weigh down corporate earnings and, therefore, share prices.

But that doesn’t mean investors concerned about deflation should avoid stocks entirely. Companies with plenty of cash, low debt, steady dividends and products that people will buy even in tough economic times should fare relatively well, analysts say.

And if inflation does come roaring back in the longer term, these companies might still do well because they tend to have significant pricing power. That means they can raise prices to compensate for their own rising costs.

The authors caution that investors should steer clear of financials in a deflationary environment because of the potential for higher defaults and weakened loan demand. The warning on banks is especially important when you think about the commercial real estate market. But what about hard assets?

Gold, which many investors consider an inflation hedge, also can be a useful deflation-fighting tool, analysts say. The government tends to respond to deflationary concerns by printing money, which in turn can spark fears of inflation and drive up the price of the metal. Gold is a hedge against financial stress, and “the source of stress doesn’t matter, whether deflationary or inflationary,” says Joe Foster, manager of the Van Eck International Investors Gold Fund.

In a deflationary period, investors should be especially wary of commercial and residential real estate and the real estate investment trusts that invest in such properties, analysts say. Much of the value of real estate is predicated on an ability to raise rents, says Morningstar’s Mr. Peters. A lack of inflation, little rent-raising power and low occupancy rates, he says, “could come back to hammer this group a second time.”

Gold is not really an investment for me, but I could see its usefulness especially if you think we are going to try to inflate our way out of deflation. It seems as if banks with high CRE exposure might be some of the worst stocks to invest in if you are particularly fearful of a deflation. My thinking is that a higher cash allocation and investments in high quality dividend paying stocks, at perhaps a greater discount than normal might work for smaller investors. I’ve only excerpted certain portions of the articles above, so remember to go back and read the rest.

I’ve been getting tons of e-mails and comments asking for a link to this lecture. Columbia seems to have gotten the message and has put it up on their site:

click to play: Video: Li Lu’s Spring 2010 Lecture

Last week, Fairfax Financial had their latest quarterly conference call. Fairfax is a holding company of different insurance operations helmed by Prem Watsa, a value investor who is sometimes called the Warren Buffett of the north. I first discovered Fairfax about 3 years ago. I learned of the company’s investing talents and saw that they looked undervalued while trading at a heavy discount to book value. Fairfax also held a portfolio of credit default swaps against major financial institutions which acted as a great hedge against the financial crisis.

Since then, I always look to their commentary to see how they think about today’s markets and their perspectives about risk in the future. Here’s what Watsa said about their hedge ratio:

Prem Watsa

Yes, I’m sorry. So, in response to the in equity markets in 2009, and early 2010, the economic uncertainty in the U.S. our equity hedge ratio to approximately 93% of our equity exposure. The effect of this increase by entering into Russell 2000 and total return swap contracts, average index level of 646.5. This was in addition to the S&P 500. Russell’s total return swap contracts we had done in September 2009 at an S&P 500. Now, I’ll give you some information on the line financials, Thank you.

Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. Q2 2010

By hedging 93% of their equity exposure, the folks at Fairfax must really be concerned about the possibility of another downturn. In a recent interview with Value Investor Insight, Watsa outlined some of his worries:

What environment are you positioned for today?

Prem Watsa: The two historical periods we believe are relevant are the U.S. in the Great Depression and the Japanese experience over the last twenty years. In Japan, nominal GDP remained flat for 20 years even though total debt as a percentage of GDP went from 50% to 200%. People will say it’s different this time and that that can’t happen in the U.S. Maybe, but I remember being in Tokyo in 1989 and people were saying the same thing. It won’t be that bad because we have high savings rates, or because the Keiretsu cross-shareholdings provide stability. Look how that turned out.

The economic story was similar in the U.S. in the Depression. After falling dramatically, nominal GNP came back up at the end of the 1930s to where it was in 1929, so there was no growth for the entire period. If not for the war, that would have lasted for a longer time.

So we don’t believe the financial crisis is over. After 20 years in which most developed countries saw leverage going to record levels, we think there are many, many years of deleveraging to go. Governments have tried to step in to mitigate the pain of that process, but as you see already in Europe, attention is turning to cutting spending and raising taxes. We expect after the mid-term elections to see much the same thing in the U.S. With a $1.5 trillion deficit and near-0% interest rates, there aren’t many bullets left.

Our conclusion is that the economy either stays relatively flat as it de-levers, or the economy slips and the resulting crisis of confidence contributes to a double-dip recession.

Are you at all concerned about inflation and rising interest rates?

Prem Watsa: Right now we’re more concerned about deflation, which would reduce Treasury rates even further. If we have a repeat of the U.S. in the 1930s or Japan over the past 20 years, long Treasuries could keep going down – or at least stay very low – for some time.

If we look at Fairfax’s equity portfolio, we can see that it is heavily weighted towards large cap high quality companies like Johnson and Johnson, Kraft, and Walmart. A number of investors have come out saying that large caps present a good value proposition right now – you can find some companies with a steady history of dividend increases and buybacks trading at historically high yields. If you’re worried about inflation, these companies are likely to provide better value than most fixed income investments.

Still, Fairfax has a substantial hedge on their equity portfolio. We know that Seth Klarman of the Baupost Group has also expressed concerns about how fast the market recovered after the crisis. So maybe there is a need to hedge portfolios. Now, smaller investors are precluded from buying the derivatives that Fairfax is using. The simplest choice would be to increase your cash allocation. Klarman has sometimes gone as high as 50% cash in recent year. If you want to get more complicated, you can use cheap insurance by way of out of the money options. With those you can profit immensely if the market declines far more than people expect, you are betting on an improbable event. These options are inexpensive because the event is so improbable to most. The flip side is that you need to continuously rollover that protection because options are targeted to a specific point in time. And it’s a negative carry trade, meaning that each time you are wrong and have to rollover, you lose a little money. The method you choose should fit your investing style. The options approach is definitely going to require more time and a means of offsetting the negative carry (or a willingness to accept it).

Two of my most popular posts on Street Capitalist have been about Li Lu. The first post was: Li Lu: Berkshire Hathaway CIO Candidate? I followed up with a second post, transcribing a lecture that Li gave to Columbia students in 2010 (Li Lu’s 2010 Lecture).

In the first post, I speculated as to whether Li might emerge as one of the Berkshire CIO candidates:

This past weekend was the Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A / BRK.B) annual shareholder meeting. At one point during the Q&A, a questioner asked Warren Buffett about the status of Berkshire’s CIO candidates. Charlie Munger remarked that one candidate who he is particular close with was up 200% in 2009 with 0 leverage. Some people think that the person Munger is referring to is Li Lu, a fund manager who turned Munger and Buffett onto BYD.

Li personally owns at least 2% of BYD, which rose 400% in 2009. I don’t know anything about his investments beyond that one position, but I know he is a huge believer in taking concentrated, high conviction positions. If that is the case here, BYD’s spectacular results must have contributed a lot to his returns for 2009 which may make a 200% for the year possible.

Li Lu: Berkshire Hathaway CIO Candidate? (Street Capitalist)

(From left to right: David Sokol of MidAmerican, Warren Buffett, Wang Chuan-Fu of BYD and Li Lu. Photo: David Yellen)

Today, Susan Pulliam has a great article in the WSJ which sheds light on Li Lu, speculating that he might be a CIO candidate. Pulliam managed to interview Charlie Munger and get some of his thoughts on Li Lu:

One of Mr. Li’s human-rights contacts was Jane Olson, the wife of Ronald Olson, a Berkshire director and early partner at a Los Angeles law firm Mr. Munger helped found. Mr. Li began spending time at the Olsons’ weekend home in Santa Barbara, Calif., and on Thanksgiving 2003 met Mr. Munger, whose home is nearby.

Mr. Munger says Mr. Li made an immediate impression. The two shared a “suspicion of reported earnings of finance companies,” Mr. Munger says. “We don’t like the bull—.”

Mr. Munger gave Mr. Li some of his family’s nest egg to invest to open a “value” fund betting on beaten-down stocks.

Two weeks later, Mr. Li says he met again with Mr. Munger to make certain he had heard right. In early 2004, Mr. Li opened a fund, putting in $4 million of his own money and raising an additional $50 million from other investors. Mr. Munger’s family put in $50 million, followed by another $38 million. Part of Mr. Li’s agreement with Mr. Munger was that the fund would be closed to new investors.

Chinese Investor Emerges as Possible Buffett Successor (WSJ)

The company that got people talking about Li Lu, as a potential successor to Buffett is BYD. Most people thought it was strange that Buffett would be investing in an automaker, based out of China of all places. But, I think that one of the allures for early investors in BYD was the fact that it is known as one of the best manufacturers of batteries in the world. Wang Chuan-Fu, BYD’s founder and CEO had to work hard to build his company with limited access to capital and technology. As a result, he fostered a corporate culture that thrived on thriftiness and ingenuity. That’s the kind of corporate culture Berkshire likes to invest in. Pulliam gives us details on Li Lu’s timing on BYD:

Mr. Li’s big hit began in 2002 when he first invested in BYD, then a fledgling Chinese battery company. Its founder came from humble beginnings and started the company in 1995 with $300,000 of borrowed money.

Mr. Li made an initial investment in BYD soon after its initial public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. (BYD trades in the U.S. on the Pink Sheets and was recently quoted at $6.90 a share.)

When he opened the fund, he loaded up again on BYD shares, eventually investing a significant share of the $150 million fund with Mr. Munger in BYD, which already was growing quickly and had bought a bankrupt Chinese automaker. “He bought a little early and more later when the stock fell, which is his nature,” Mr. Munger says.

In 2008, Mr. Munger persuaded Mr. Sokol to investigate BYD for Berkshire as well. Mr. Sokol went to China and when he returned, he and Mr. Munger convinced Mr. Buffett to load up on BYD. In September, Berkshire invested $230 million in BYD for a 10% stake in the company.

BYD’s business has been on fire. It now has close to one-third of the global market for lithium-ion batteries, used in cell phones. Its bigger plans involve the electric and hybrid-vehicle business.

One of the interesting aspects of having Li as a CIO candidate is that because of his international focus, particularly on China, he might be able to find the next great wave of global businesses. In his 2010 lecture, Li talks about analyzing BYD by looking at the early history of GM:

Q: I read that when you look at an industry, you look at the most miserable failures of that industry to see whether you will invest in it. Can you talk a bit about that?

Li Lu: It goes back to understanding the business. Once you have that understanding you can extend it to understanding an industry. A certain industry might have characteristics that make it different than others. In certain industries you might have better prospects than others. Find the best of the players in the industry and the worst players. And see how they perform over time. And if the worst players perform reasonably well relative to the great players — that tells you something about the characteristics about the industry. That is not always the case but it is often the case. Certain industries are better than others.

So if you can understand a business inside out you can then eventually extend that to understanding an industry. If you can get that insight, it is enormously beneficial. If you can then concentrate that on a business with superior economics in an industry with superior economics with good management and you get them at the right price — the chances are that you can stay for a very long time.

Q: Did you have any specific example?

Li Lu: I have studied many over the years. As I have said, don’t copy other people’s insights because it doesn’t work. Automobiles are amazing. If you look at the early days it started with several players and concentrated with just a few players that became enormously profitable. Then they became miserable. You then see how the life cycle turns with new automakers in China and India. Everything has a reason. If you want a good idea — look at General Motors from the early days, look every 5 years and see how the performance metrics change. The Graham and Dodd Center should collect all the data and perform some kind of commentary on it…

If you have that data, the amount of insight that would yield would be astonishing. So instead of just accepting the conventional wisdom that the auto business is bad — that is just not true. Or if you say well those guys just unbelievable money machines — that is not true either. So if you can really examine those statistics and understand it that will give you an advantage for analyzing new situations like in China and India. That is really what turns me on. Understanding this gives you a tremendous leg up.

This to me, is one of the advantages in having a CIO candidate that is focused on international opportunities. As nations like China and India develop, they’re bound to naturally mimic the development of Western countries in certain ways. They might actually start to have great businesses that arise out of necessity, “repeating” what’s gone on in America. This is particularly true in areas such as logistics and transportation which become more and more essential as countries develop. In a few years there might be domestic versions of FedEx or Sysco in China and India — if there aren’t already.

Just how much did Li and Buffett make off of BYD?

BYD is a big roll of the dice for Mr. Li. He is an informal adviser to the company and owns about 2.5% of the company.

Mr. Li’s fund’s $40 million investment in BYD is now worth about $400 million. Berkshire’s $230 million investment in 2008 now is worth about $1.5 billion. Messrs. Buffett, Munger, Sokol, Li and Microsoft founder and Berkshire Director Bill Gates plan to visit China and BYD in September.

Pulliam ends the article with Li’s analogy between investing and soccer:

Mr. Li declined to name his fund’s other holdings. Despite this year’s losses, the $600 million fund is up 338% since its late 2004 launch, an annualized return of around 30%, compared to less than 1% for the S&P 500 index.

Mr. Li told investors he took a lesson from watching the World Cup, comparing his investment style to soccer. “You may very well work extremely hard and seldom score,” he says. “But occasionally—very occasionally—you get one or two great chances and you make decisive strikes that really matter.”

Li’s approach to investing is really similar to Buffett’s own advice to wait for the market to give you fat pitches. I think most investors mess up by lacking that kind of patience.

In environments where there aren’t a whole lot of bargains, some value investors will begin to relax their standards in order to participate more in the market’s rallies. This almost always ends in disaster. If you are not disciplined with value investing you can get yourself into tight spots. It’s a strategy that often encourages taking high conviction, concentrated approaches to investing. An investor without discipline might end up with a portfolio of only 8 stocks at really expensive valuations. When the bubble bursts, their portfolio will take a massive hit and usually perform worse than the market indices because of that level concentration.

In his 2010 lecture, Li emphasized the need to know what you don’t know when investing. That might sound a bit like a riddle, but it’s really about acknowledging that you can’t know everything and there are going to be risks that you cannot anticipate. If you accept that idea, you’re always going to be looking for businesses with strong competitive advantages and seek to buy at a discount to intrinsic value. That way you have some protection against those unknown risks. With that intellectual framework and a willingness to employ rigorous analysis, you should be able to identify good investments and profit immensely.