Sandy Nairn: The secrets of true value investing

Be disciplined, follow the rules and always anchor your views in the data. Merryn Somerset Webb talks to Edinburgh Partners' Sandy Nairn about where investors should look to find value.

When I went to meet Sandy Nairn last week my mind was full of Burberry its slowdown in sales and what it tells us about Chinese growth (nothing good, obviously). So I ask Sandy if he thinks that the sell-off in luxury goods stocks in the aftermath of the Burberry statement might tell us that global investors are beginning to get it on China. If it is, he says, it's about time. Anyone who actually thought that China could grow at a compound real rate of 8%-9% indefinitely "clearly can't do arithmetic".

Most investment mistakes come from the "linear extrapolation of secular trends". The views of the China bulls are just another example of this. When people are convinced by something, they tend to seek out evidence that "supports their existing view rather than looking for evidence to the contrary".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.