The Master Investor Checklist

"The best investment is a business you understand, bought at a price with ample room for error."

This series has worked through a dozen distinct lenses on the same problem — judging a business and its price. Brought together, they make a single checklist to run before committing capital:

1. Buffett — is the moat wide and the runway long?
2. Klarman — does the bear case still work at this price?
3. Greenblatt — is the return on capital high and the price reasonable?
4. Greenwald — does earnings power exceed asset value?
5. Marks — where are we in the cycle, and what is the true risk?
6. Fisher (Ken) — are the crowd's worries already in the price?
7. Taleb — could the portfolio survive a rare, severe shock?
8. Lynch — can I explain this in one sentence, and is the growth reasonably priced?
9. Fisher (Philip) — does it pass the qualitative questions, and would I hold it for years?
10. Mauboussin — what expectations are already embedded in the price?
11. Druckenmiller — is the position sized for the conviction I actually have?
12. Whitman — if earnings vanished tomorrow, what are the assets worth?

No single lens is sufficient on its own; together they form a reasonably complete toolkit. A practical way to use it: the more boxes a prospective investment ticks, the more conviction is warranted — and when only a few are satisfied, the honest answer is usually to pass.

Illustrative example: the toolkit in one line each

Patience, discipline, screening, franchise rigour, risk clarity, sentiment, tail risk, everyday edge, research depth, the expectations gap, conviction sizing, and an asset floor. Each investor contributes one habit of mind; the combination is the point, not any single name.