What’s Your Margin of Safety?

I have a poll running at Value Investing News regarding margin of safety.  I’ve been struggling with my own thoughts on margin of safety, so I thought I would ask others what they consider to be an adequate margin of safety to intrinsic value before buying a stock.  Here’s what I’m asking:

What is your minimum required margin of safety for buying stocks?

Please visit the Value Investing News poll and leave a response.  After you vote, you can see the current responses to the poll.  After this week, I’ll post the final results here as well.

I think I will be running a poll every week on Value Investing News.  Do you have any questions you would like to have other value investors answer?

4 thoughts on “What’s Your Margin of Safety?

  • July 26, 2007 at 4:59 am
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    which would you rather have or which is a better use of FCF, buybacks or dividends.

  • July 26, 2007 at 7:04 pm
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    If you forget taxes it doesn’t matter if a company buys back stock or pays dividends. That said, a company doesn’t want to risk lowering its dividend so it might prefer to just buy back stock even if the stock isn’t trading at a discount. In my opinion I’d rather have management buy back stock when its cheap and pay me dividends when its not. I’m sure someone else could provide a better answer.

  • July 27, 2007 at 3:29 am
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    sorry, I meant for that to be a question suggestion for the VIN poll. I think it would be a good question because it is a little controversial. I’ve heard good arguments for both. thats an interesting concept Nick. i’ve never heard that before. the best arguments I’ve read were somewhere on the motley fool site. I remember Buffett is for buybacks.

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