Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

Library · Investing

• Author: Philip A. Fisher
• FinSimLab rating: 4/5
• Reading: Moderate
• Finance level: Advanced
• Published: 1958

Qualitative criteria to identify quality companies and hold them for years.

What it covers

Fisher sets out fifteen points to assess a company, from sales potential to the quality of management, and a method for gathering information by talking to customers, suppliers and competitors. It complements Graham's quantitative approach with business analysis.

What you will learn

• Which questions to ask about a company's business and management.
• Why margins and how they evolve say a lot about quality.
• When selling a stock makes sense and when it does not.

Who it is for

Stock investors who already know the ratios and want to judge business quality.

Concepts

Business quality, Stocks, Long term

What you will not learn

Ratios or numerical valuation: his method is qualitative.

Already read a book on this?

• It shares analysing the business before buying a stock with One Up On Wall Street. If you have read One Up On Wall Street, this one mainly adds stricter criteria on quality and management. One Up On Wall Street

We suggest you continue with

• The Little Book of Valuation (in the "I want to understand the stock market" path)

Related Academy guides

• Competitive advantage (moat): how to identify it with data
• ROIC and margins: what sets a quality company apart
• How to do a basic fundamental analysis of a stock

Put it into practice

• Company profiles
• Stock comparison

More investing books

• The Intelligent Investor
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street
• The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
• The Simple Path to Wealth
• One Up On Wall Street
• The Little Book That Beats the Market
• The Most Important Thing
• The Little Book of Valuation

Descriptions written by FinSimLab for educational purposes. They do not summarise the books and are not investment advice.