Why Warren Buffett waits for the fat pitch

Warren Buffett borrowed the fat pitch idea from a baseball legend, and it might be the simplest investing lesson there is.

I have recently done a YouTube video about the Fat Pitch approach to investing, but in researching that came up with the Punch Card approach to investing, which sort of suits us.

The origins of the fat pitch

The original idea of the Fat Pitch approach came from Ted Williams, a Boston Red Sox hitter, in his 1970 book The Science of Hitting. Williams carved the strike zone into seventy-seven squares, each the size of a baseball, and worked out his batting average for each one.

In his best squares he hit around .400. In the low outside corner he hit around .230. His discipline was simple – only swing at balls in the good squares, and let the rest go by even if that meant taking strikes.

Why investors have it easier than batters

Buffett took this and pointed out the bit that makes it better for investors than for batters. In baseball, you get called out on three strikes. In investing, there are no strikes.

Nobody forces you to swing. You can stand there with the bat on your shoulder for months or years while thousands of pitches go past, and the only penalty is that nothing happens. So you wait for the fat pitch – the one that is slow, in the middle, and obviously mispriced – and then you swing hard and big. Swinging big is an important element – if you are going to ignore a lot of possible opportunities, then the easy ones you have to hit a lot harder.

What this means for investors

What it means for an investor.

• Do nothing most of the time. Activity is not the same thing as returns.
• When the good one comes, size it properly. A fat pitch bunted for a single is a wasted opportunity.
• Stay inside your circle of competence, because you can only tell a fat pitch from a nasty one in areas you actually understand.
• Cash is not dead money, it is the bat on your shoulder.

The punch card variant

Charlie Munger said the trick is not being smarter than everyone else; it is being able to sit on your backside and do nothing for very long stretches without getting bored.

Buffett added the Punch Card variant – he said, imagine you get a card with twenty punches on it for your whole investing life, one punch per decision, and when it runs out you are done. He reckoned you would make much better decisions and end up much richer.

Applying it to our portfolio

Whilst we are trying to make excuses for selling last week and not buying back in this week, this story suits us. We’ll go mad trying to duck and weave with $160m+ being pushed around by every twist and turn. If we can just time the market correctly twenty times before I shuffle off this mortal coil, it’s job done.

Are the last four days a major market pivot point? I doubt it.