Scuttlebutt method: You can’t do too much of scuttlebutt. The general premise of why you are interested in something should be 80 percent of it. You don’t want to be chasing down every idea using the scuttlebutt method.
So you must have a strong presumption. You should be like a basketball coach who runs into a seven-footer on the street. You are interested to start with. Now you have to find out if you can keep him in school, if he’s coordinated, … That’s the scuttlebutt aspect of it.
As you acquire knowledge about businesses, first do some reading about them, then get out and talk to competitors, customers, suppliers, ex-employees, and current employees, … You will learn a lot. But it should be the last 20 percent or 10 percent.
You really want to start with a business where you think the economics are good, where they look like a seven-footer, and then you go out with a scuttlebutt approach to possibly reject your original hypothesis. Or maybe you confirm it,.
About me and why this series:
I got a life-changing experience studying Warren Buffett’s annual letters in 2013 after 10 years of speculating, market timing, charting, and forecasting. I started investing in the Vietnamese stock market in 2015 with what I saved from my engineering job. In 2018, I decided to study Warren Buffett’s investing again by going through all of available Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting videos. It has been another life-changing experience. Warren Buffett’s teaching is a real germ and yet not many people replicate. Hence, I am committed to share what I learned.
You can subscribe to my blog to follow the series of what Warren Buffett has been teaching in his annual meetings. I attempted to modify but keep as much as possible what he spoke.
The Samurai Coach 
its really good.
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