Waiting for Mr Market

There's no great secret to being a great investor, says Merryn Somerset Webb. You just have to learn to be patient.

One of the greatest books ever written on investment is Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. You can learn more about Graham's ideas on the merits of value investing in this week's interview with value fund-management firm Oldfield Partners and if you are serious about stock picking for yourself, you should definitely read the book. But in the meantime I will tell you that the key take-away from it is the concept of Mr Market.

Graham asked investors to think of themselves as one of two partners in a business, with the other being an overemotional and frequently irrational manic depressive (Mr Market). Mr Market comes to you every day with a price at which he is willing to either buy out your part of the business or to sell you his part. His price is different every day and very rarely bears any relation to the real value of the business.

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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.