Sarah Mitchell
Education Editor
Investment Education Editor at 13F Insight. Breaks down complex institutional data into actionable insights for individual investors.
A note from Sarah
Hi, I'm Sarah. I spent four years at Vanguard's Investor Education team, where my whole job was making 401(k) statements feel less like tax forms and more like something a person could actually understand.
I'm here at 13F Insight to do the same thing for institutional data. If you've ever read a headline like "Berkshire Bought Apple" and thought "okay but what does that actually mean for me," that's the gap I want to close.
I'll never assume you know what a CUSIP is. I'll always tell you why a number matters before I give you the number. And if a guide of mine ever leaves you more confused than you started, that's on me — let me know and I'll rewrite it.
Articles by Sarah Mitchell (810)
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Book Value and Price-to-Book: The Balance-Sheet Yardstick
Book value, assets minus liabilities, was once value investing's starting point, and price-to-book its key ratio. Learn why it still anchors bank and insurer valuations, why intangible-rich businesses broke it, and how to tell when a low price-to-book is a clue or a trap.
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Concentration Risk: When One Position Is Too Big
Concentration turns conviction into outsized returns, or outsized losses. Learn the unforgiving math of position sizing, why a 25% holding that halves can define a year, why concentration amplifies risk most when paired with uncertainty, and how to read it directly in a 13F.
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Private Credit Explained: The Lending Boom Outside the Banks
Private credit, lending by asset managers instead of banks, has grown into a multi-trillion-dollar market since the financial crisis. Learn how it works, why quality investors own the fee-earning platforms like Apollo and Blackstone, and the risks hidden beneath the growth story.
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Dividend Payout Ratio: How to Judge if a Dividend Is Safe
A dividend yield is a promise, not a guarantee. Learn how the payout ratio, the share of earnings or free cash flow paid out, reveals whether a dividend is safe, why a fragile 8% is worth less than a dependable 3%, and how high-dividend value managers screen for durability.
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Pricing Power: The Rare Trait Quality Investors Hunt For
Pricing power, the ability to raise prices without losing customers, is one of the rarest and most valuable traits a business can have. Learn where it comes from, how to test for it, and why it becomes decisive when inflation squeezes everyone else's margins.
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Circle of Competence: Investing Within What You Know
The circle of competence isn't about how much you know, but how well you know its edge. Learn the Buffett-Munger idea, why misjudging the boundary causes the worst mistakes, and why a borrowed stock idea is only useful if it falls inside your own circle.
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Earnings Yield: Valuing a Stock Like a Bond
Earnings yield flips the P/E ratio to show profit as a percentage of price, letting you weigh a stock like a bond. Learn how it works, its starring role in Joel Greenblatt's magic formula, and why it only works paired with a measure of quality.
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Intrinsic Value: The True Worth Behind a Stock's Price
Every value judgment is really a comparison between price, which the market hands you, and intrinsic value, which you must estimate. Learn what intrinsic value is, how investors approximate it, why it's inherently uncertain, and how that uncertainty creates opportunity.
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Net-Net Investing: Graham's Original Deep-Value Strategy
Net-net investing, Graham's original method, buys stocks for less than their net current asset value, effectively getting the business for free. Learn how NCAV works, why such bargains are rare today, and the value-trap risks that make diversification essential.
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Return on Equity (ROE): A Core Test of Business Quality
Return on equity measures how much profit a company earns on its owners' capital, and high, consistent ROE is a signature of business quality. Learn why quality investors prize it, what counts as good, and the leverage and buyback traps that can mislead.
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Mr. Market: Graham's Parable of Price Versus Value
Benjamin Graham's Mr. Market is a moody partner who quotes you a price every day, sometimes euphoric, sometimes despairing. Learn the parable, the price-versus-value lesson at its core, and how it explains the behavior of disciplined value managers.
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Recurring Revenue: Why Subscription Businesses Command a Premium
Two companies can sell the same dollar of product and be worth very different amounts, depending on whether that sale repeats. Learn why recurring revenue commands a premium, how retention drives the math, and why not all subscription revenue is equally sticky.
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Owner Earnings: Buffett's Truer Measure of Profit
Frustrated by misleading earnings, Warren Buffett popularized owner earnings: an estimate of the sustainable cash a business can hand its owners after staying competitive. Learn how it's built, why maintenance capital is the hard part, and how it shapes quality portfolios.
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Compounding: The Math Behind Patient, Long-Term Investing
Compounding is growth that builds on itself, and its back half dwarfs the front. Learn why the math rewards inactivity, what actually makes a business a true compounder, and why a long-held 13F position is the strategy, not staleness.
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Switching Costs: The Moat That Keeps Customers From Leaving
Switching costs keep customers from leaving even when a rival is cheaper, handing a business pricing power and recurring revenue. Learn this most durable type of economic moat and why it appears again and again in quality-focused portfolios.
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Free Cash Flow Yield: A Quality Investor's Valuation Tool
Earnings can be dressed up; free cash flow is harder to fake. Free cash flow yield measures the cash a business throws off against its price, letting you compare it like a bond. Learn why quality investors lean on it, and the traps to avoid.
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Index Inclusion and Institutional Ownership Explained
When a stock joins the S&P 500, every index fund must buy it, regardless of price. Learn how that mechanical demand reshapes ownership and float, and why a jump in institutional ownership around an inclusion date is not a vote of confidence.
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Reading 13F Holdings Alongside Short Interest
A 13F shows only long positions, leaving you blind to who's betting against a stock. Pair it with short interest and you can spot battleground names, crowded trades, and squeeze setups that neither data set reveals on its own.
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Do Stocks Rise After a 13F Is Filed? The Lag Problem
Can you profit by copying what the smart money bought? The 45-day reporting lag means you're reading stale positions, and the research on post-filing drift is sobering. Learn why filings are a research starting point, not a real-time buy list.
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Relative-Value Investing: The Flat-Weighted Value Approach
Relative-value managers don't chase the single most undervalued stock; they assemble a flat basket of names cheap versus their own history and peers. Learn how to spot the style in a 13F and why the largest position isn't the signal you think it is.