A Rare Interview with Phil Fisher Following the 1987 Crash

Fisher Discusses Market Crashes, Avoiding Popular Stocks, Management, Circles of Competence, Waiting for Big Payoffs, Retirement, & More

The late Philip Fisher (1907-2004) is known within the investment community as one of the most influential investors for common sense investing, and someone whose teachings are on par with the likes of Peter Lynch & Warren Buffett. In fact, there have been occasions where Buffett himself proposes his investing style is 15% Fisher and 85% Graham. When asked about this in the interview, Fisher would describe the contrast between the two philosophies as follows.

“There are two fundamental approaches to investment. There’s the approach Ben Graham pioneered, which is to find something intrinsically so cheap that there is little chance of it having a big decline. He’s got financial safeguards to that. It isn’t going to go down much, and sooner or later value will come into it. Then there is my approach, which is to find something so good–if you don’t pay too much for it–that it will have very, very large growth.” - Phil Fisher

Well-known for his book, Common Stocks & Uncommon Profits, which …