SUMMARY REVIEW
(April, 1999)
"In the short-term,
the market is a voting
machine, in the long-term it is a weighing machine."
Benjamin Graham
We know that through past experience and market history that the most popular stocks are not always the best values, and therefore, are not always the best investment for the long-term investor. As we have shown in this newsletter, only a handful of stocks have been moving the market indexes, while the majority of the stocks have only performed at par or have even declined in recent periods.
As Benjamin Graham, the father of security analysis and the teacher to Warren Buffet and many other great money managers said, "In the short-term the market is a voting machine, in the long-term it is a weighing machine."
While we are obviously disappointed that some of our company's true values are not reflected in their current stock prices, while other companies of lesser values are exhibiting mania characteristics, we have great confidence in our value style of
investing. This value approach has a proven history of superior performance when compared to all other investment disciplines for the last 60 years, including the 25 years that Century Management has been managing portfolios.
We believe that our portfolios are invested in a group of well diversified companies and industries that represent great values. Over the long run as the market weights these values, the stock prices in our portfolios will reflect their true value through higher prices.
We have touched on CPI Corporation (CPY), Schlumberger (SLB), and Toys R US (TOY) to illustrate the values within your portfolio, as we felt this would be a good representation of our various positions. In our future communications, we will cover various companies, their products, management, industry position, etc., as well as discuss other financial topics that we feel will be of interest.
