📖Jeremy Grantham

Management Evaluation

🌿 Intermediate★★★★★

Judge management by actions, not words.

💬

Evaluate management by their actions, not their words. Look for a track record of capital allocation, shareholder communication, and aligned incentives.

— GMO Quarterly Letters,2017

🏠 Everyday Analogy

Valuation is like buying a house: the asking price reflects mood, but true value comes from structure, location, and long-term utility. Good assets still need sensible prices.

📖 Core Interpretation

In Management Evaluation, Jeremy Grantham focuses on the gap between price and value. Returns come from paying less than what a business is worth, not from guessing short-term market moves.
💎 Key Insight:Track record reveals true management quality.

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❓ Why It Matters

Ignoring valuation turns even good companies into poor investments. Overpaying compresses future returns and leaves little margin when assumptions are wrong.

🎯 How to Practice

Estimate intrinsic value with conservative assumptions, set clear buy ranges, and act only when price offers a meaningful discount with acceptable downside.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Confusing a low price with true cheapness
Using one metric without business context
Overly optimistic assumptions that erase margin of safety

📚 Case Studies

1
Dot-Com Bubble Mean Reversion (2000)
Grantham warned that tech stocks were absurdly overvalued versus historical norms and trimmed GMO’s exposure before the crash.
✨ Outcome:When the bubble burst, GMO portfolios fell less than the market and later redeployed into cheaper equities as valuations normalized.
2
U.S. Housing and Credit Bubble (2007)
Grantham highlighted extreme overvaluation in U.S. housing and risk assets, cutting exposure to equities and credit pre-crisis.
✨ Outcome:GMO avoided the worst of the 2008 collapse and then added risk as spreads and equity valuations reverted toward historical averages.

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