Sir John Templeton’s Rule No. 8: Do your homework or hire wise experts to help you

People will tell you: Investigate before you invest. Listen to them. Study companies to learn what makes them successful. Remember, in most instances, you are buying either earnings or assets. In free-enterprise nations, earnings and assets together are major influences on the price of most stocks. The earnings on stock market indexes—the fabled Dow Jones Industrials, for example—fluctuate around the replacement book value of the shares of the index. (That’s the money it would take to replace the assets of the companies making up the index at today’s costs.)

If you expect a company to grow and prosper, you are buying future earnings. You expect that earnings will go up, and because most stocks are valued on future earnings, you can expect that the stock price may rise also.

If you expect a company to be acquired or dissolved at a premium over its market price, you may be buying assets. Years ago Forbes regularly published lists of these so-called “loaded laggards.” But remember, there are far fewer of these companies today. Raiders have swept through the marketplace over the past 10 to 15 years: Be very suspicious of what they left behind.