Um trecho muito bom do livro do Fisher.
comentada em 18/06/2020 17:52

However, it should be realized that, just as the degree to which a company is a low-cost producer increases the safety and conservatism of the investment, so in a boom period in a bullish market does it decrease its speculative appeal. The percentage that profits rise in such times will always be far greater for the high-cost, risky, marginal company. Simple arithmetic will explain why. Let us take an imaginary example of two companies of the same size that, when times were normal, were selling widgets at ten cents apiece. Company A has a profit of four cents per widget and Company B of one cent. Now let us suppose that costs remain the same but a temporary extra demand for widgets pushes up the price to twelve cents, with both companies remaining the same size. The strong company has increased profits from four cents per widget to six cents, a gain of 50 percent, but the high-cost company has made a 300 percent profit gain, or tripled its profits. This is why, short-range, the high-cost company sometimes goes up more in a boom and also why, a few years later, when hard times come and widgets fall back to eight cents, the strong company is still making a reduced but comfortable profit. If the high-cost company doesn't go bankrupt, it is likely to produce another crop of badly hurt investors (or perhaps speculators who thought they were investors) who are sure something is wrong with the system rather than with themselves.