Quality Investing: Owning the best companies for the long term

Shockingly good. Another reviewer complains that there's no "framework" here. Thank God. Look, in some fields no matter how far you progress there's another framework - solid, concise, complex, interlocking body of knowledge - to be learned. Classical mechanics > electromagnetics > quantum, etc. More commonly in other fields there's some basic useful framework everyone should learn right away, but once that's mastered progress is all about filling your head with and deeply internalizing a huge number of relatively simple facts, stories, and patterns. (Of course academics and their imitators do not accept this reality and pretend instead that the structure of knowledge in micro, macro, or psych - don't even get me started on biases/heuristics popularizations - can be reduced to a series of neat interlocking frameworks.) Anyhow this book is packed dense with these useful chunks, and the more you've got stored away the more likely a light bulb of familiarity flickers in your head when you crack open a new 10-K. For example, there's this company called Clearone that I've followed awhile that makes puzzlingly high gross margins considering what they do - video conferencing equipment. But it clicked when I read this book's chapter on how friendly middlemen can create unusually strong businesses, i.e. optometrists always recommending a particular brand of high quality glasses because he cares not at all about price. Clearone sells to a friendly non-price sensitive middleman - big system integrators that do large scale technology installments for universities, corporations, hospitals, etc. Anyhow, the book is great, dense, legitimately useful, and minimally redundant with other investing books because it skips the usual routine of either romanticizing basic value investing concepts or trying to force fit some artificial framework on the tangled mess of knowledge that is useful to investing.

Great investing book about quality investing. Goes from theory to practice, still has valid examples of industries and companies, and characterizes the challenges in quality investing.

The book was well written with plenty of examples. The book could have been a little deeper, but is good when taken at a high level.

So very well written and truthful!. Thank you very much for all the examples and for cutting to the chase along all the book. Loved it!!!

Great book. Provides examples of great businesses/investments and not just the fundamental overview of value investing that all value investing books provide.

Some exceptionally good parts with interesting insights and some parts which are rambling, not very well thought through and don't seem to be written with conviction, probably reflecting the styles of different analysts or managers within the fund. All in all, for those who subscribe to Buffett's philosophy of looking for great companies at a fair price, this is a useful introduction to how to think about companies.

Best for quality analysis most read book

We are trying to get into investments so my husband and I got this book. It is an easy read and very informative. We learned a lot.

Excelente livro, recomendo!

REGALO

Absolutely loved it. This book really helps in understanding the traits of Quality Companies. Fresh ideas which are explained in an amazing way. Books by Harriman House are so damn delicious for the Inquisitive brain!

Quality investing consist of selecting ‘the specific traits, aptitudes and patterns that increases the probability of a particular company prospering over time -- as well as those that decrease such chances,’ according to the authors (p.2). It is notably the combination of predictable cash generation, sustainable high return on capital, and attractive growth opportunities. The book covers all these aspects of quality investing from an expert point of view, but in accessible language. It provides definitions of terms and shows examples of quality companies (as well as those that aren't). Twenty-two case studies also examine companies in more detail. The book covers the pitfalls and portfolio implementation of quality investing at the end of the book. Investors can use the criteria in this book to improve their stock-picking checklist. It would be great to have in a future edition an annex with a list of criteria and parameters to analyse quality companies.

Enjoyed reading about how AKO define quality and some of the things to avoid (or seek out in the case of shorts!) The authors provide good examples of a variety of types of businesses with strong economic moats in sometimes atypical ways. Not sure that I agree that quality is worth any price, but can see their point on how the market misses the lack of operational volatility and the ability to reinvest cash flow in productive ways.