Christopher H. Browne

Christopher H. Browne of Tweedy, Browne & Co. died a few days ago and in memory of this value investor, here are excerpts from a speech he made to the Graham and Dodd Value Investing Center at Columbia University in November 2000.

"A whole body of academic work formed the foundation upon which generations of students at the country’s major business schools were taught about Modern Portfolio Theory, Efficient Market Theory and Beta. In our humble opinion, this was a classic example of garbage in/garbage out."

"Investment performance is generally measured against a benchmark, and claims to being long-term investors aside, the typical institutional client tracks performance on a monthly or quarterly basis versus the benchmark. Performance that deviates from the benchmark becomes suspect and can lead to termination of the money manager. Consistency of returns relative to the benchmark are more important than absolute performance especially in a world dominated by the hypothesis that asset allocation is more important than stock selection."

Columbia Speech