Value Investing Made Easy: Benjamin Graham's Classic Investment Strategy Explained for Everyone Review

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Value Investing Made Easy: Benjamin Graham's Classic Investment Strategy Explained for Everyone ReviewSome reviewers criticize Lowe, claiming 1) the book is too simple, 2) she simply quotes people like Buffet, Graham and Lynch, and 3) she doesn't explain her calculations enough. I disagree on all counts! You really should take a look at this book; it's an excellent all around introduction.
1. Is the book too simple? No, it's supposed to be simple. Lowe herself explains in the title, and in the preface, that this book is meant to be ``Graham and Dodd made easy''. She did a good job; that's just what the book is. After you read this book, you should think about moving on to Graham and Dodd--but this book is a good start.
2. What's wrong with quoting successful folks like Buffet, Graham and Lynch? Remember, this book is ``Graham and Dodd made easy'', so it's bound to contain lots of references to Graham and Dodd. Naturally, it also contains quotes from Graham's most successful disciple, Warren Buffet. The quotes are well chosen, so Lowe has done us a service. She has distilled the wisdom of the master.
3. Should Lowe make recommendations, like ``use this formula; don't use that one''? I don't think so. The problem with value investing is that no one formula perfectly captures business worth. If there were a simple formula, then everyone would be a millionaire. The fact is that you need to know several different ways of looking at company value. Each way is reasonable. Your personality, viewpoint and tolerance for uncertainty decides how you weight these different variables. However you do it, you will be exactly as successful as you are careful and businesslike.
So all around, I think this book is an excellent introduction to value investing. It captures the spirit of great investors, while remaining readable and clear. Well worth your time.Value Investing Made Easy: Benjamin Graham's Classic Investment Strategy Explained for Everyone Overview

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The New Buffettology: The Proven Techniques for Investing Successfully in Changing Markets That Have Made Warren Buffett the World's Most Famous Investor Review

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The New Buffettology: The Proven Techniques for Investing Successfully in Changing Markets That Have Made Warren Buffett the World's Most Famous Investor ReviewThis book is an improved version of their original. Particularly better was the coverage on what makes a durable competitive advantage. Also, the formulas and approach was organized better.
By reading the negative reviews of this book and its original you will find that this is a book written to be easily read. The authors did a great job of cleaning up the the "I knew Warren" tone of the first book.
The only drawback of this book is its over-simplifying the complications that can occur when you do a value approach - particularly when you look at real data. Still, this new book gives many examples to walk the reader through the methodology.
There is no statistical results shown that this method does indeed beat the market. You have to take it on faith that this methodology is used by Buffet, that it is what produced his great success, and that it can be duplicated in today's market.
Still, this is a great book, and I recommend it to investors, and to businessmen who need to understand more about "durable competitive advantage" and the kinds of businesses they should be creating. There is much more that needs to be said about competitive advantage. There are several books on this (starting with Michael Porter). This book gives a simplified version.
I think it is important to know that Buffet is not a Jack Welch type of manager. I would say he is closer to a Harold Geneen in that he is more of a "rentier" than a get-in-the-trenches manager/leader like Welch. This effects his choice of businesses. His approach is to own the only gravel pit in the county, and milk it for many years. This is certainly a good approach, but one that is difficult to pull off because a competitive advantage is difficult to hold on to.
It appears that significant monies were made by Buffet using investments not following this method (hedging, speculating on interest rates). These have provided buffers against when the value investing techniques didn't work.
Perhaps most important in the author's and Buffet's approach is the use of stock selection criteria that are outside of the radar of the average investor. And, that criteria is the screening on "durable comepetive advantage." Few investors screen stocks on this qualitative data. If this criteria indeed selects successful companies then you will do better than those without this information (assuming you buy right).
After reading this book, you can find out more on competitive advantage and stock prices by reading the books by A. David Silver (Quantum Companies). He is one of my favorite authors on durable competitive advantage. You should also read some of the recent books on how to research companies, like the one by Hoover.
There are many books on value investing. There is even a "Dummies" book on it. All of these are recommended because you will find that there can be a lot more to it than presented in this book. I would think that some kind of value investing test should be a requirement for all CEO's. Hopefully such a focus would keep certain CEO's and their partners-in-crime (CFO's) from focusing on hyping up the stock price through fraud, and get back to producing real business results. This book does not tell you how to detect puffed up earnings and fraudulent balance sheets. You'll need to read other value investing books for this.
Overall, I believe that if you follow the simple formulas in this book, you will find good value stocks. Buy this book, rather than the other previous ones.
John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TXThe New Buffettology: The Proven Techniques for Investing Successfully in Changing Markets That Have Made Warren Buffett the World's Most Famous Investor Overview

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Contrarian Investment Strategies - The Next Generation Review

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Contrarian Investment Strategies - The Next Generation ReviewThe key idea in this book constitutes sound common-sense advice to any investor: buy a diversified portfolio of out-of-favor stocks with sound underlying businesses (e.g., low P/E firms) and sell when the market recognizes their value. The book is controversial because it slams current academic theories on how the market works, especially the idea of "efficient markets". Dreman believes that simply because of the way our minds work, the market tends to systematically over-react or under-react to news (especially earnings reports), and this can be exploited forever (because the way our minds are wired is not going to change). Other controversial ideas: 1) don't buy index funds (because the committees which make indexes tend to put in firms which have had a price run-up and drop firms which have had a price decline, so that buying the index involves buying high and selling low); 2) don't buy NASDAQ stocks unless they have great volume (because NASDAQ market-makers are not regulated enough, and will cheat you on the spread); 3) avoid international (non-US) stocks (because international markets have performed much worse than the US stock market over time); 4) equities are a safer way to hold money than treasury bonds or gold or cash (because of inflation and taxes). The author presents fairly detailed statistical evidence to show that his methods have worked over the past several decades. This is actually evidence that even academics are beginning to notice.
That said, it should be noted that the author's Kemper-Dreman fund (ticker: KDHAX) has done pretty badly in the last few years. Also, some of the stock picks in his Forbes column have been horrible. The most glaring example would be Prison Realty (ticker: PZN), which is currently hovering on the verge of bankruptcy. Dreman recommended it because of its REIT status and its high dividend yield both of which went away shortly after.
My 2c: consider the guy's broad investment strategies with respect, but don't follow his (or anyone else's) picks without putting in your own research.Contrarian Investment Strategies - The Next Generation Overview

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