Mark Sellers: 'Optionalities' are key to good investments

Hedge fund manager Mark Sellers can be relied on to provide valuable insight into investing each week in his column for the Financial Times. In this weekend's newspaper, he writes about "optionality" and the market's frequent failure to assign the proper value to companies at crossroads. As Sellers writes, "When I use the term "optionality", I'm referring to a situation where binary outcomes are possible and it's difficult to determine the likelihood of either scenario occurring. When it's difficult to determine something, the market will sometimes take the lazy route and just ignore it. That's where the inefficiency comes in. Bill Miller has said the market won't pay for optionality. In my experience, this is often true."

He goes on to discuss his firm's investment in Carrizio Oil and Gas (NASDAQ: CRZO), and investors may do well to do a little research into that situation.

But the larger point of Sellers's column is important: The best, can't-lose opportunities in investing often involve companies experiencing a great deal of uncertainty. The key for investors is finding opportunities where the worst case scenario won't result in a large decline in value.

Monish Pabrai refers to this as "Heads I win, tails I don't lose much" and argues that a focus on finding these situations has led to the success of the world's most successful investors and businesspeople including Warren Buffett and Richard Branson.

Pick up a copy of his book The Dhandho Investor.