Common Stock Warrants

February 26, 2019 By: Dudley Pierce Baker There are days, and this is one of them, when I feel like I’m preaching to the choir about the profit potential of   investing in common stock warrants. It’s a small choir of successful investors, but there are few people in the pews paying attention to my sermon. The granddaddy of investing in stock warrants was Sidney Fried, who died in 1992 at age 72. He was active from the 1950s to the 1970s, publishing a warrant survey newsletter, “The RHM Warrant Survey”, and writing many books about warrants — all of which I own and have studied for many years. Despite his towering expertise about stock warrants, Fried was puzzled and frustrated that otherwise savvy investors ignored stock warrants. Today, I am an echo of that frustration. In his “The Speculative Merits of Common Stock Warrants”, published in 1949, Fried wrote: “…with potential profits and potential losses so great it is a source of wonder that so little understanding of the nature of common stock warrants exists not only among the investing ‘public’, who might be forgiven this sin, but even among the many ‘professionals’ of the business upon whom the ‘public’ depends for information and guidance.” The news of the past few years reminds me of Fried’s frustration. Warren Buffett made another half-billon or so because he invests in common stock warrants. This time the warrants were with General Motors (he barely broke even here), but he made a bundle exercising … Continue reading →