Over the years, I have made plenty of mistakes with stocks and lost money on many of them, even after I read Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett. The mistake that scared me the most was when I bought into Sears at $170 in 2007, thinking it was extremely undervalued. Then a few months later, I suddenly recognized that Sears is a poor retailer and my wife never went to Sears to buy anything. I sold it at about the same price. Although I didn't lose money on Sears, I still get nightmares from it today. When I was writing Chapter 2 three months ago, the stock was traded at above $14. Now it is below $7. This made me think more about the quality of business and built my conviction of never buying low-quality companies again, no matter how undervalued they seem to be!
Then I made mistakes with good companies. I didn't hold them long enough and missed further gains with great companies like Starbucks and Danaher.
I did do it right with companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Church & Dwight, EBIX, AutoZone, and a few others.
I put what I learned into GuruFocus value screeners, charts, data, and other research tools over the past 12 years. I wrote this book to share my lessons. I hope that even people who don't analyze stocks full time can benefit from it. I hope that my children can stay in the right framework for investing. I do advise them to take accounting courses in college.
Finally, I want to pull the main ideas together:
If there is one point that you should get from this book, it is, “Buy only good companies!” Stick with good companies, buy them at reasonable prices, and keep learning. You can indeed invest like a Guru.