Topic 7.6: Building Your Own Value Investing Checklist

Building Your Own Value Investing Checklist

Welcome to the most important lesson in this entire university.

You have studied the legends. You have analyzed the great victories and the tragic defeats. You have the knowledge. But knowledge alone is not enough. When the market is crashing and fear is in the air, knowledge can evaporate, replaced by pure emotion. This is the moment where fortunes are made or lost. The single biggest difference between amateur investors and legendary figures like Buffett and Munger is not intelligence—it’s process.

For decades, the world's best investors have relied on a secret weapon to enforce discipline, kill emotion, and make rational decisions under extreme pressure. It's not a complex algorithm or a secret source of information. It's something far more powerful: a systematic, battle-hardened checklist.

This isn't just any checklist. It is the culmination of everything we have studied together. It’s the framework that would have identified the temporary crisis at American Express, seen through the noise surrounding Meta Platforms, and, most importantly, raised the critical red flags that signaled the death of Kodak. It is your shield against the value trap and your compass to find true opportunity.

We are about to build this checklist together, pillar by pillar. This is the operating system for a successful value investor. The framework that turns theory into practice begins now.