📖Li Lu

Quality at a Fair Price

🌿 Intermediate★★★★★

Seek quality businesses at fair prices.

💬

The ideal investment is a high-quality business purchased at a fair price. Quality compounds wealth; fair prices protect capital.

— Li Lu Columbia Lectures,2010

🏠 Everyday Analogy

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

📖 Core Interpretation

Li Lu 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:Quality and fair price together create optimal investments.

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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
Financial Crisis Bank Bets (2008)
During the global financial crisis, high‑quality U.S. financials traded at distressed prices despite strong franchises and survivable balance sheets.
✨ Outcome:Purchases made at large discounts to conservative intrinsic value estimates produced substantial gains as panic subsided and earnings normalized.
2
Investment in BYD (1999)
Li Lu analyzed BYD’s technological and cost advantages in batteries and autos, seeing a durable moat in engineering talent and vertical integration.
✨ Outcome:Backed BYD early; Berkshire Hathaway later invested, and BYD became a multibagger over the following decade.

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