With CLG and PLY firing the starters gun on another confession season, I'm reminded that it's the Due Diligence you do before the events that is worth the most.

There will always be hiccups in businesses, and with analysts playing the expectations game, volatility is a feature of markets, not a bug (the price of admission according to Morgan Housel - treat volatility like a fee, not a fine).

Aligns with some notes I wrote to myself this morning...

The biggest opportunities come from when the market is pricing a business well under your estimates of intrinsic value.

However, this is usually for an understandable reason – hopefully this is because in the Short Term things are bad but these are temporary and in the Long Term things will be a lot better with a high degree of certainty.

You will better placed to take advantage of these opportunities if you understand the business better than the market.

That's all a bit academic and probably obvious but often hard to do - especially when the DD takes a lot of time and is far away from the bustle of the market while you patiently prepare for an opportunity that might never come.

Buffett (again) is the master at this, famously being prepared to wait forever for an opportunity.

When they finally get around to canonising him he will no doubt be St Warren, the patron saint of patient investors!

Disc: Neither held, I like some things about both CLG and PLY but don't understand them (can't see a sustainable / growing competitive advantage) or get exited enough about them to do the work required to understand them.