These are the rules or principles that I’ve followed over the past 50 years of investing. I’ll talk about them in more detail as I go through the book, but taken as a whole, these provide some key lessons for the investor.

1. Endeavour to buy shares on modest valuations – hopefully with an attractive yield and single-figure price earnings ratio and/or discount to net asset value/real worth.
2. Ignore the overall level of the stock market. Don’t make judgements on the macro outlook – leave that to commentators and economists. Focus on your particular selection.
3. Be prepared to hold for a minimum of five years.
4. Have a broad understanding of the PLC’s main business activity – one which makes sense to you.
5. Ignore minor share price movements. Looking back years hence you will have got it either right or wrong; whether you originally paid, say, 55 pence rather than 50 pence will be totally irrelevant.
6. Seek established companies with a record of profitability and dividend payments – avoid start-ups and biotech or exploration stocks.
7. Look for moderately optimistic or better chairman’s/CEO’s most recent comments.
8. Focus on preferably conservative, cash-rich companies or those with low levels of debt.
9. Ensure the directors have meaningful shareholdings themselves in the PLC and ‘clean’ reputations.
10. Look for a stable Board – infrequent directorate changes. Similarly with professional advisers.
11. Face up to poor decisions. Apply a 20% ‘stop-loss’ – sell and move on. However, ignore stop-loss if there is a major overall market fall.
12. Let profitable holdings run. Don’t try to be too clever, i.e. selling and hoping the market will fall to ‘buy back’ at a lower price.