Ken Fisher
Founder of Fisher Investments and son of growth pioneer Philip Fisher — a prolific writer who popularized price-to-sales analysis and disciplined contrarian thinking.
Who he is
Ken Fisher founded Fisher Investments in 1979 and grew it into one of the largest independent money managers in the world. The son of Philip Fisher, he wrote a long-running Forbes column and several investing books, including "Super Stocks" and "The Only Three Questions That Still Count".
He is known for blending quantitative discipline with a relentlessly contrarian, behavior-aware view of markets.
Core philosophy
Fisher helped popularize the price-to-sales ratio as a way to value companies — especially those with temporarily depressed or volatile earnings — arguing sales are harder to manipulate than earnings.
His broader framework rests on "three questions": What do you believe that is actually false? What can you fathom that others find unfathomable? And what is your brain doing to mislead you? The goal is to find information already in the price versus genuine, knowable edges the crowd has missed.
Key lessons for individual investors
- Earnings can be massaged; sales are stickier — price-to-sales can reveal value that P/E hides.
- Most "insights" are already priced in; an edge requires knowing something true that the consensus has wrong.
- Your own brain is a source of error — guard against the behavioral traps that cost investors returns.
- Bull markets last longer than fear suggests; staying invested through noise usually beats timing.
- Being contrarian is not being negative — it is being independent and evidence-driven.
Live track record & latest portfolio
Real figures from public 13F filings and historical returns, via Fisher Asset Management, LLC. For education only — not investment advice, and not a recommendation to copy any position.
Annual return history
Yearly returns (%) as reported by GuruFocus. Past performance does not predict future results.
Source: GuruFocus. Figures are delayed and may be revised.
Ask Ken Fisher a question
Type a question about Ken Fisher's classic investment theories, or pick one below.
When the price already assumed a miracle
In 1972, institutions convinced themselves that about fifty "one-decision" growth stocks could be bought at any price and never sold. Polaroid traded above 90 times earnings, McDonald's and Disney near 80, Avon around 65. Run the arithmetic backwards and those prices quietly assumed decades of flawless, ever-accelerating growth.
The 1973–74 bear market repriced the dream: the group fell 60–90%, and Polaroid eventually went bankrupt. The cruel detail is that many of the businesses kept growing exactly as promised — the investments still failed, because the starting price had already spent the future.
Run the DCF backwards: ask what growth today's price assumes, then ask honestly whether reality can deliver it.
The courage to do nothing
At the top of the speculative "Go-Go" years, Buffett — after thirteen years compounding near 30% with no down year — wrote to his partners that he no longer understood the market and could find nothing sensible to buy. Rather than lower his standards, he closed the partnership and handed back the money at the peak of his fame.
Then he waited. When the 1973–74 crash finally arrived, he was liquid while everyone else was forced to sell, and described feeling "like an oversexed man in a harem" — buying the Washington Post and other franchises at panic prices that set up the next thirty years.
Cash and patience are positions too. Standards only count if you keep them when it is hardest.
You don't need a scale to know a man is fat
In the brutal 1973–74 bear market, the entire Washington Post Company — the newspaper, Newsweek magazine and several TV stations — traded for around $100 million. Buffett conservatively reckoned the assets were worth at least $400 million. No precise model was needed: the gap between price and value was visible from across the street.
He invested about $10.6 million, then watched the stock fall further and did nothing but wait. Decades later the position was worth more than $1 billion, plus a stream of dividends along the way — a return of roughly one hundred times. As Buffett put it: you don't need to know a man's exact weight to know that he's fat.
The point of comparing price with value is to spot obvious gaps — not to manufacture false precision.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
What is the price-to-sales ratio?
A valuation metric comparing a company's market value to its revenue. Ken Fisher popularized it as a tool for valuing firms whose earnings are temporarily depressed or volatile.
Is Ken Fisher related to Philip Fisher?
Yes — Ken is the son of Philip Fisher, author of "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits" and a foundational figure in growth investing.
Question what the consensus has already priced in:
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