RWH034: The High Road To Riches w/ Peter Keefe
We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network
Stig Brodersen
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2023
⏱️ 116 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, William Green chats with Peter Keefe, an outstanding investor who’s trounced the market over three decades. Here, Peter discusses his timeless investing principles, what he looks for in a great business, how he evaluates the quality of management, why he loves Microsoft & Markel, why managing money is a high calling, & what investors can learn from apex predators.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
00:00 - Intro
02:55 - How Peter Keefe taught himself to invest intelligently.
07:59 - Why he loathed selling stocks as a broker on commission.
28:12 - How Peter built a dazzling record based on timeless principles.
31:49 - Why he views selling great businesses too early as his costliest mistake.
38:46 - Why he ignores economic predictions.
42:50 - Why he owns a concentrated portfolio of 10-12 stocks.
47:39 - How Microsoft & Markel embody what he looks for in a business
52:28 - How he made hundreds of times his money on American Tower.
1:14:33 - How he evaluates the quality of management.
1:25:52 - What investors should learn from apex predators.
1:43:29 - Why humility is an indispensable virtue for investors.
1:44:22 - Why a money manager’s principal motivation should be to serve others.
1:46:30 - How Peter measures a successful life.
Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.
BOOKS AND RESOURCES
- Peter Keefe’s investment firm, Avenir Corporation
- Peter Keefe’s letters to shareholders
- Hendrik Bessembinder’s study, Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills?
- Clayton Christensen’s book, How Will You Measure Your Life?
- William Green’s book, “Richer, Wiser, Happier” – read the reviews of this book
- Follow William Green on X (AKA Twitter)
NEW TO THE SHOW?
- Check out our We Study Billionaires Starter Packs.
- Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here.
- Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance Tool.
- Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services.
- Stay up-to-date on financial markets and investing strategies through our daily newsletter, We Study Markets.
- Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts.
- Help us understand our audience better so we can create a more intentional user experience by answering this survey!
SPONSORS
- Invest in Bitcoin with confidence. Get $5 in Bitcoin when you invest $100 with River.
- Invest in some of the top private, pre-IPO companies in the world with Fundrise.
- Reach the world’s largest audience with Linkedin, the place to B2B. Plus, enjoy a $100 credit on your next ad campaign!
- Learn how Principal Financial can help you find the right benefits and retirement plan for your team today.
- Experience real language learning for real conversations with Babbel. Get 55% off your Babbel subscription today.
- Beat FOMO and move faster than the market with AlphaSense.
- Choose Toyota for your next vehicle - SUVs that are known for their reliability and longevity, making them a great investment. Plus, Toyotas now have more advanced technology than ever before, maximizing that investment with a comfortable and connected drive.
- Be confident that you’ll be small businessing at your best with support designed to help you reach your goals. Book an appointment with a TD Small Business Specialist today.
- Get a customized solution for all of your KPIs in one efficient system with one source of truth. Download NetSuite’s popular KPI Checklist, designed to give you consistently excellent performance for free.
- Start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Be in control of every sales channel with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period today.
- Reach the world’s largest audience with Linkedin, the place to B2B. Plus, enjoy a $100 credit on your next ad campaign!
- Send, spend, and receive money around the world easily with Wise.
- Feed your body the nutrients it craves with Ka’Chava, an all-in-one, plant-based superblend made up of superfoods, greens, plant proteins, antioxidants, adaptogens, and probiotics! Get 10% off on your first order today!
- Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.
HELP US OUT!
Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It takes less than 30 seconds, and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to TIP. |
| 0:02.6 | Hi there. |
| 0:03.6 | I'm really delighted to introduce today's guest, Peter Keefe, who's one of the great unsung |
| 0:08.8 | heroes of the financial world. |
| 0:11.3 | Since Johnny and investment firm called Avenir Corporation back in 1991, Peter's racked |
| 0:16.0 | up a dazzling record, trouncing the market by around 3 percentage points a year. |
| 0:22.3 | Thanks to the beauty of long-term compounding, that adds up to an enormous margin of our performance |
| 0:27.8 | over the last 33 years. |
| 0:29.4 | Also, Peter's a grand master at identifying great businesses when they're undervalued |
| 0:35.4 | and then holding on to them for many years, often decades, in fact. |
| 0:39.9 | But he isn't just a superb stock picker, he's also one of the wisest and most insightful |
| 0:45.6 | people I've encountered in the world of money management, a profession that he regards |
| 0:50.1 | as a sacred calling. |
| 0:52.5 | As we discuss in this conversation, when Peter meets or mentors, young money managers |
| 0:57.8 | he often says to them, you're serving someone, the question is who? |
| 1:03.4 | It's a wonderful and slightly unsettling question, I think, and it's been quietly smouldering |
| 1:09.1 | away in my mind for months since I started thinking about it. |
| 1:13.2 | I suspected something that all of us should ask ourselves, whatever it is we do for a living. |
| 1:18.7 | What's also fascinating to me is that Peter has flown almost entirely under the radar |
| 1:24.2 | during very little attention to himself and almost never speaking in public, despite |
| 1:28.6 | his outstanding record as an investor. |
| 1:31.6 | I actually only heard about him because of a very talented and thoughtful friend of mine, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Stig Brodersen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Stig Brodersen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.