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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network

RWH034: The High Road To Riches w/ Peter Keefe

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network

Stig Brodersen

Education, Investing, Business

4.63.6K 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.


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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,

...

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