Philip Arthur Fisher   

Born:  September 8, 1907

Died:  March 11, 2004

Philip Arthur Fisher is the father of Qualitative analysis and one of the greatest investors who ever lived.  He was the author of the investing masterpiece “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits”, which is considered the investing bible for most serious buy and hold investors.  He has inspired multiple generations through his writings and introduced a whole new system to the investing world. 

His methods involved the analysis of management by how well they managed their organization.  He believed in buying companies that innovated while being extremely consistent in their growth strategies.  He was not interested in one hit wonders that had a great idea that lasted a few years and then fizzled out (along with the company).  He wanted to own companies that had a strong pipeline of new innovations that would cannibalize their previous product offerings.  He sought out companies that invested heavily in developing strong research departments and who had management that understood that research was the lifeblood and growth engine for the entire enterprise. He bought very few companies over his lifetime and was the ultimate “buy and hold” investor. 

Here at Mycroft Research LLC. we use Mr. Fisher’s methods once we have completed our initial screening and then dive deep into each company’s historical records,  news reports and press releases, trying to identify ones that score very high on Mr. Fisher’s “15 Points”.   We at Mycroft Research LLC. owe much of our success to Mr. Fisher and we are not the only ones.  Warren Buffett has said on many occasions that reading Mr. Fisher’s books and following his methods did wonders for his investment results.