Mr. Market
Mr. Market is Benjamin Graham’s allegory for the stock market, and it’s the most useful mental model in investing. Imagine a business partner who shows up every day offering to buy your stake or sell you his — at a price set entirely by his mood. Some days he’s euphoric and quotes absurdly high; some days he’s despairing and quotes absurdly low. Two things make him the ideal partner: his quotes are options, not orders, and he never takes offence when you ignore him.
The discipline follows directly: price and value are different things, and the market exists to serve you, not to instruct you. The investor’s edge has never been predicting Mr. Market’s mood — it’s refusing to catch it.
How the Moat Index applies this
The separation of price from value is built into the site’s structure. The Moat Score never moves with the market — only new SEC filings move it, per the methodology. Mr. Market’s quote never enters the score; where it does enter is the valuation — the margin of safety, where the daily price is compared against a conservative estimate of intrinsic value. And Quality on Sale is simply a watchlist of his despairing days — moments when durable businesses are quoted below that conservative estimate.