Dutta Choudhury Partnership
A partnership firm established to manage partners' paid-up capital
A partnership firm established to manage partners' paid-up capital
"Simplicity has a way of improving performance through enabling us to better understand what we are doing." — Buffett and Munger
Circle of competence
Durable competitive advantage
Management
Margin of safety
wonderful company at a fair price
In no sense whatsoever, is any rate of return guaranteed to partners. Partners who withdraw are doing just that — withdrawing.
Any year in which DCP fails to achieve at least a +6% performance in a financial year, managing partners earn zero.
When we talk about yearly gains or losses, we refer to market value — how our assets are valued at year-end compared with the beginning of the fiscal year.
Whether the managing partners do a good job or a poor job is not to be measured by whether we are plus or minus for the year. It is instead to be measured against the general experience in securities as measured by the Nifty, leading mutual funds and likewise. If our record is better than that of these yardsticks, we consider it a good year, whether we are plus or minus. If we do poorer, we deserve the tomatoes.
While managing partners much prefer a five-year test, we feel three years is an absolute minimum for judging performance. It is a certainty that we will have years when the partnership performance is poorer, perhaps substantially so, than the Nifty. If any three-year or longer period produces poor results, we all should start looking around for other places to have our money. An exception to the latter statement would be three years covering a speculative explosion in a bull market (such as '90-'92, '98-'00, '04-'08 and '17-'20).
The managing partners are not in the business of predicting general stock market or business fluctuations. If you think we can do this, or think it is essential to an investment program, you should not be in the partnership.
The managing partners cannot promise results to general partners. What we can and do promise is that:
a) Our investments will be chosen on the basis of value, not popularity;
b) That we will attempt to bring risk of permanent capital loss (not short-term quotational loss) to an absolute minimum by obtaining a wide margin of safety in each commitment and a diversity of commitments;
c) We will have most of our net liquid worth invested in DCP.
dcp-partners@googlegroups.com
Not publicly available
New Town, Kolkata
Letters will be published here every first Saturday of Q1 and Q3, starting Q1 2026.
DCP seeks to draw inspiration from the philosophy, operational approach, and execution discipline of Buffet Partnership Limited (BPL). While this serves as a guiding reference point, there can be no assurance that DCP will be able to achieve results comparable to those attained by BPL.
Over its thirteen-year lifespan, BPL racked up ~28x cumulative gain (~29% CAGR), as compared to the Dow at ~1.5x (~7% CAGR). Even after Buffett collected his share of the proceeds, limited partners finished with ~15x return (~24% CAGR).
| Year | Overall Results (From Dow) | Partnership Results | Limited Partners’ Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | -8.4% | +10.4% | +9.3% |
| 1957–58 | +26.9% | +55.6% | +44.5% |
| 1957–59 | +52.3% | +95.9% | +74.7% |
| 1957–60 | +42.9% | +140.6% | +107.2% |
| 1957–61 | +74.9% | +251.0% | +181.6% |
| 1957–62 | +61.6% | +299.8% | +215.1% |
| 1957–63 | +94.9% | +454.5% | +311.2% |
| 1957–64 | +131.3% | +608.7% | +402.9% |
| 1957–65 | +164.1% | +943.2% | +588.5% |
| 1957–66 | +122.9% | +1156.0% | +704.2% |
| 1957–67 | +165.3% | +1606.9% | +932.6% |
| 1957–68 | +185.7% | +2610.6% | +1403.5% |
| 1957–69 | +152.6% | +2794.9% | +1502.7% |
| Annual Compounded Rate | +7.4% | +29.5% | +23.8% |