My approach was to immerse myself in a business until I got to a point where I felt that the strategies I was handing off were the ones I would use were I running the company myself. I would break each company down into distinct logical components and then come up with a plan for managing each part, using a variety of financial tools, especially derivative instruments. The most important components to separate were the profits coming from the core business and those that were speculative profits and losses coming from price changes.
