I have sinned dear Graham

First, a bit of history:



A classic and underrated performance by Queen.

When Freddie was singing "I have sinned dear father" I don't think he was talking about his investment decisions.

However if I were to write a song to Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing, about some of my recent investing decisions I might have to include a similar line.

Selling a fantastic company like Google to buy into fair to middling companies like British Airways and CSR was crazy. I have been in and out of Google a number of times in the past 3 years. Overall I would have been better off just to have stayed in and enjoyed the bumpy ride.

The encouraging news is that Warren Buffet himself confesses to making similar mistakes - selling shares in a great company to lock in a profit and take advantage of a "bargain" elsewhere, only to end up buying back into the original company at a higher price.

Sometimes the hardest part of value investing is doing nothing. Buying and selling is fun. Watching from the sidelines can be quite fun but doesn't get the pulse racing.

So successful value investors have to make a trade-off: less fun but better results.

I am not going to rush into buying back into Google, but I will gradually build up a decent stake and this time I am going to keep it unless the stock becomes crazily overvalued.

As Warren once said, in investing you don't get better results just for making a hard decision. Buying into Google is an easy decision and all the better for it.