THE SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS - Belief #4

"Good ideas are hard to find, but there are always good ideas out there, even in bear markets. The “stock market” is really a misnomer. Rather, there is a market of stocks. Any individual investor can do well regardless of the overall market. The most disciplined value investor iden-tifies and purchases shares of the best businesses possible at excellent prices. In fact, many value investors believe that the best ideas are found during bear markets, when great companies are attractively priced. This is due to the fact that the market is forward-looking and often discounts the current economic environment. Prudent investors know that bear markets are a natural part of an economic and market cycle, and the fact that every bear market has come to an end after a reasonable length of time provides evidence of this belief. Therefore, given the notion that bear markets are temporary in nature, and that companies during bear markets are more attractively priced, one can only come to the conclusion that there are good investment opportunities to be had, if not some of the best opportunities, during bear markets. Indeed, the best time to have purchased some of the most valued companies for the long term was in bear-market periods."

THE SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL BELIEFS - Belief #4