📖Jeremy Grantham

Industry Structure Analysis

🌿 Intermediate★★★★☆

Industry structure shapes investment outcomes.

💬

Understand the industry structure before evaluating any company. Industry economics often matter more than company-specific factors in determining returns.

— GMO Quarterly Letters,2017

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Analyzing a business is like choosing a long-term partner. Temporary excitement matters less than durable character, capability, and consistency.

📖 Core Interpretation

Jeremy Grantham emphasizes durable business quality over short-term noise. A strong model, real competitive edge, and disciplined capital allocation matter more than quarterly excitement.
💎 Key Insight:Industry economics often matter more than company specifics.

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❓ Why It Matters

Without business-quality filters, investors drift toward stories rather than economics. Durable cash generation is what supports long-term valuation.

🎯 How to Practice

Use a checklist covering moat, management, unit economics, and capital allocation; track long-term cash generation instead of quarter-to-quarter noise.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Buying narratives instead of cash-generating economics
Overreacting to short-term operating noise
Ignoring management quality and capital allocation

📚 Case Studies

1
Agricultural Commodity Tightness (2011)
Extreme weather, rising emerging‑market diets, and constrained arable land triggered sharp rises in grain and food prices, consistent with Grantham’s resource‑scarcity framework.
✨ Outcome:Ag, fertilizer, and farmland investments outperformed; volatility later normalized, but structural pressure on food systems remained evident to long‑term investors.
2
Dot-Com Bubble Restraint (1999)
Grantham avoided overvalued tech stocks despite client pressure and soaring Nasdaq indices, focusing on valuation discipline.
✨ Outcome:Underperformed during the mania, then strongly outperformed after the 2000–2002 crash as overpriced tech collapsed.

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