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About the high value of YouTube for value investors and business leaders
YouTube, the world’s second most popular website, is also one of the most underappreciated investor resources, says Andrew Hunt, author of Better Value Investing:
Founded in May 2005 and acquired by Google in 2006 for 1,65 billion USD, YouTube has over 3 billion page views every day and would now be worth over 45 billion USD as a standalone company.
When you think of YouTube, it’s probably cute cat videos that come to mind rather than serious investment research. However, when you browse the channels from a value investor perspective, you will be surprised, how an increasingly valuable resource YouTube has become.
In order to clarify: Value investing is a active investment style to pick stocks that are traded less by the market than their ‘true’ value, based on fundamental parameters like earnings, dividends, book value or cash flow. In the 1930s, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, both finance professors at Columbia University, laid out the framework for value investing and Warren Buffett – one of Ben Graham’s students – became the most successful value investor of our time and one of the richest people in the world.
It would be difficult to dial and get through Warren Buffett. If the phone isn’t a solution, the browser can be.. You find well made Buffett-documentations by Bloomberg or the BBC on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rLXtRjfVwcw and https://youtu.be/w-eX4sZi-Zs or Warren Buffett’s Top 10 Rules For Success https://youtu.be/iEgu6p_frmEA
Make use of YouTube, sit back, listen and learn to invest money. Or use the channel for research, for instance of better understanding companies and products. Almost regardless of the product, there’s probably someone who has posted a review. This is especially so for tech products. YouTube can also be great for learning how specialist products (such as new drugs or aircraft parts) actually work, or how they are manufactured.
The site is full of interviews with directors, chairmen and management teams. Unless you’re a very big investor, you may not always be able to get access to management teams or have a record of what they’ve said in the past. Fortunately, you can often get a lot of information and insights on them from YouTube. And it’s not just big companies – surprisingly often there are clips or interviews with owners and managers of small and overseas companies too.
The third and probably most valuable aspect of YouTube is its contribution to investor education. It is packed with interviews, lectures and profiles of all the top investors. There are hours of footage on all of them. Indeed, it seems that many of the keynote lectures given at investing conferences quickly end up on YouTube. This really is a great place to learn. For instance from outspoken contrarian investor Cliff Asness whose thoughts – from stocks and bonds to the Cirque du Soleil – are always worth to consider:
Cliff Asness (full) | Conversations with Tyler
Cliff Asness: A Brief and Biased Survey of Quantitative Investing
Are Markets Efficient? Baloney, Says Money Man Cliff Asness
For any investor who also has a leadership or managerial role, Simon Sinek’s talk, ‘Why Leaders Eat Last’ is one of the most insightful, fascinating and inspiring presentations you will ever hear. It describes how to lead others well and is especially relevant to investment management as it explains how great leadership can avoid the sort of destructive competition and short-term behavior that is frequently encountered: Simon Sinek: Why Leaders Eat Last
Adam Westbrook has some nice 5-minute films that convey important ideas through fascinating stories and historical examples:
The simple reason things always go wrong: the Peter Principle
Finally, “The Long Game”, in which Adam Westbrook explains how long it takes for even the most talented to become really good at what they do. It describes the importance of perseverance, patience and the will to push through what Westbrook dubs “The Difficult Years.” This is educational story telling at its most inspiring.
The Long Game Part 2: the missing chapter
In his other films Westbrook covers topics as diverse as the difficulties of linking cause and effect, how technology changes us in unexpected ways and why bananas are so cheap.
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Make use of it! YouTube is a great – and free – source for financial education and a valuable tool for investors and business leaders
