Bringing Buffettology to Bangkok

It’s not often that Mary, who was a Buffett in-law for 12 years and authored the bestseller “Buffettology” with David Clark, puts her name behind a start-up, but she did after testing Jitta and finding it to be an impressive investment tool.
This raises the chances that Jitta.com from Thailand may soon make it big on the global retail investment scene.
The ex-Buffett in-law met Thailand’s Trawut Luangsomboon, founder of Jitta.com, about three years ago and was one of the first investors in this start-up, which began in the US in 2014.
Unlike other stock investment tools in the market, Jitta makes retail investment easy for most individuals, based on the style of Warren Buffett, whose success has been primarily driven by the way he buys excellent stocks when they are undervalued. The latest example is his recent decision via his Berkshire Hathaway company to buy Apple stock worth about US$1 billion (Bt35.7 billion) when the stock price dropped on weaker iPhone sales, betting that Apple would rebound in the long run.
According to Jitta.com, which covers US, Thai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam stocks, Apple is given a score of 8 out of 10, meaning it’s a wonderful company and when its price dips below Jitta’s “fair price” as happened recently, it’s time to buy.
In other words, you can invest like Buffett using the Thai startup’s service from mobile phones or other devices.
Jitta is easy to use and a good learning tool for people who are not experts in retail stock investment.
By adopting the key elements of Buffettology, the tool helps lessen risks and allows users to do their homework with ease before making investment decisions, as the key features are just the Jitta Score on the quality of companies and Jitta Line on the fair prices of those stocks based on the past 10 years of their financial performance. Mary said her former father-in-law also likes strong brandnames with good earnings, as seen in blue chips such as Coke, Amex, Heinz and IBM.
Mary, who teaches at California State University and UCLA, said Warren buys a stock as if he was buying the whole company, based on its intrinsic value and an expected 10 per cent or more return per year.
When excellent stocks are not yet undervalued, the legendary investor could wait for decades before buying at the right price.
Over the past 50 years, Warren’s Berkshire Hathaway, which started out as a holding company in the 1950’s, has generated consistent compound returns on investment of over 20 per cent per year, making him the world’s best long-term investor.
While Warren has not yet used Jitta, he may one day, but he already owns Moody’s and S&P rating companies, whose services are used by professional investors as well as fund managers around the world.
In the US, Jitta is betting on the growing number of retail investors who want to manage their own portfolios, even though many still invest via their 401(k) retirement plans and fund managers.
Asia has a bigger proportion of retail stock investors, so the startup aims to tap Thai and other regional users who want to invest in 6,000 US stocks, 600 Thai stocks, 2,000 Hong Kong stocks, 800 Singapore stocks and 600 Vietnamese stocks in the Warren Buffett style.