Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Fisher's 'scuttlebutt' method — learning about a company by talking to customers, suppliers, competitors, and former employees — defined qualitative analysis. His 15-point checklist for evaluating a growth company remains one of the best ever created. Buffett says he's '85% Graham and 15% Fisher,' but that 15% is what turned him from a cigar-butt picker into a great-company buyer.
Try the scuttlebutt method yourself: cold-call a company's suppliers, customers, and former engineers, then chat with executives. Fisher could; you cannot. The fifteen points are questions, with no instruction on getting answers an outsider can trust, and his exemplary growth companies (Motorola, Texas Instruments, mid-century Dow) are a survivor's gallery. The prose plods; the useful ideas fit in a memo.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
