Peter Cundill: An Investing Book Discussion

The Security Analysis Podcast

This is a discussion about the book, Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist by Christopher Risso-Gill.

I discussed the book with Nelson, also known as The Canadian Dividend Investor. Nelson is a returning guest to the podcast and I thought he would be an ideal person to discuss this book with.

Peter Cundill was a value investor who achieved a 15% rate of return from 1974 to 2010. This was a period of time when the US stock market returned 9.6% and international stocks returned 7.7%.

Cundill employed a deep value style of investing and emphasized low price-to-book stocks and net-net’s. He even had NET-NET on his license plate.

He started his fund after reading about Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham in the book Supermoney on a flight in 1974.

He is an extremely unique character who lived life to the fullest. He was a world traveler who made it a point every year to visit the country with the worst-performing stock market so he could analyze it for opportunities.

He was deeply devoted to physical fitness and routinely ran marathons well into his 50s. His philosophical thoughts about life in his journals are extremely thought provoking.

He passed away in 2011 at the age of 72 due to a neurological disease called Fragile X.

Links

* The book, Routines and Orgies: https://www.amazon.com/Routines-Orgies-Financial-Philosopher-Philanthropist-ebook/dp/B00QB6Y080

* A shorter book about Cundill, There’s Always Something to Do, which focuses more on his investment career: https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Always-Something-Christopher-Risso-Gill-ebook/dp/B00CS5BR9S/

* Nelson’s substack:

* The first episode with Nelson where we discussed his approach to investing:

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