📖Jeremy Grantham

Market as Your Servant

🌱 Beginner★★★★★

Use the market as your servant, not your guide.

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The market exists to serve you, not to guide you. Use market prices to your advantage — buy when the market offers bargains and sell when it offers premiums.

— 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 Market as Your Servant, 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:The market offers prices; you decide whether they're fair.

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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
Oil and Commodity Spike (2008)
Global demand, limited supply, and speculation drove oil above $140 and broad commodities sharply higher, echoing Grantham’s warnings on finite resources.
✨ Outcome:Investors in energy and resources benefited near‑term; subsequent crash hurt late entrants but reinforced long‑run scarcity thesis.
2
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.

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