The Core Worldview of Growth Investing

What if the most important investment decision you made was not when to sell, but whether to buy something truly great in the first place — and then have the discipline never to sell it? Growth investors believe that a genuinely superior business, bought at a reasonable price and held for a decade, will outperform virtually any strategy built on trading, timing, or cheapness.

Why This Matters

Growth Investing was codified by Philip Fisher, whose 1958 book "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits" challenged the Graham orthodoxy. Where Graham focused on financial statements and statistical cheapness, Fisher focused on business quality: management excellence, competitive advantages, the capacity to reinvest at high returns, and the size of the opportunity ahead. Fisher's thinking influenced Warren Buffett's evolution from pure Graham-style "cigar butt" investing to the quality-focused approach of Berkshire Hathaway's modern era. Peter Lynch, Terry Smith, and Nick Sleep each carried the tradition forward — each emphasising a slightly different dimension of quality, but all grounded in Fisher's core insight: the best returns come from finding exceptional businesses and holding them long enough for compounding to do its work.