Review annual reports from a few years back, paying special attention to what management said then about the strategies for the future. Then compare those plans to today’s results; how fully were the plans realized? Also compare the strategies of a few years ago to this year’s strategies and ideas; how has the thinking changed? Buffett also suggests it can be very valuable to compare annual reports of the company in which you are interested with reports of similar companies in the same industry. It is not always easy to find exact duplicates, but even relative performance comparisons can yield
...more
