ISRG buyer

Intuitive Surgical Becomes a Sorry Story Stock, Red Flag

I guess if you are short term trader (and I mean one who thinks in terms of weeks, months or a year or two) then ISRG's stock at much higher levels had less margin of safety. At today's price you have a greater margin of safety. Their fundamental business and value offering is sound. One thing a company cannot change is a credit crisis or crashing economy. However despite the fact they can't change it we are all quite sure it will recover. We just don't know if that will be in 6 months or 5 years...but it will.

So what does an investor do as opposed to a trader? As Buffett says if you are a net buyer of cheeseburgers over your lifetime you want the cheapest price of cheeseburgers. So the price of ISRG is down right now so you buy. If it goes down you buy more. If in 10 or 15 years ISRG is $1000/share or more (remember the power of compounding) then the buys at 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 all look pretty good.

Remember one of buffett's greatest purchase was the Washington Post. Down over 60% for him after he bough it. Sound familiar? He sat on a loss for 3 years. Well in the end it was a 127 bagger. This is the difference in thinking about business ownership and management over 5 or 10 years plus as opposed to worrying about a stock chart wiggle over months or a couple years.