Chou Associates

Francis Chou

Francis Chou is a Canadian deep-value investor and a self-taught disciple of Benjamin Graham. He came to Canada from India in 1976 at age twenty with $200 in his pocket, ended his formal schooling at Grade 12, and took a job as a telephone technician at Bell Canada. Reading Graham's work on his own time set the course of his life: in 1981 he gathered six co-workers into an investment club seeded with $51,000. When the club had grown to $1.7 million by 1986, he converted it into the Chou Associates Fund, the start of the Toronto firm he still runs. Between the club and the fund, Chou left Bell in 1984 to work as a retail analyst at Gardiner Watson, where he met fellow value investor Prem Watsa and helped him understand how to evaluate insurance companies. A CFA charterholder, Chou invests the way Graham taught: he looks for bargains priced well below their worth, holds for the long term, and works independently — willing to sit on large cash positions when he sees few opportunities worth buying. In 2004 the Canadian Investment Awards named him Morningstar Fund Manager of the Decade, recognition of the discipline he has applied across a career spent in quiet, patient value investing.