As mentioned earlier, this new category has been growing and has produced very satisfactory results. We have recently begun to implement a technique, which gives promise of very substantially reducing the risk from an overall change in valuation standards; e.g. If we buy something at 12 times earnings when comparable or poorer quality companies sell at 20 times earnings, but then a major revaluation takes place so the latter only sell at 10 times. This risk has always bothered us enormously because of the helpless position in which we could be left compared to the “Generals–Private Owner” or
...more