One of our favourite value investors here at The Acquirer’s Multiple is Jim O’Shaughnessy.
O’Shaughnessy recently wrote an awesome series of tweets detailing twenty five investment lessons that he’s learned over thirty years of value investing. They’re a must read for all investors.
With Jim’s permission here are his twenty five timeless investing lessons:
Source: https://stockarchitect.com/sector/Transport-Related-Services
Most textbooks portray humans as self-interested people making rational economic decisions, but people often are far from rational in making investment decisions.
Behavioral economics provides insight into why humans make sub-optimal decisions, studying the impact of psychological, cognitive and emotional factors on economic and investment decisions. Two winners of the Nobel Prize in economics, Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman, have been recognized for their pioneering work in behavioral economics.
In awarding the Nobel to Thaler in 2017, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated, “His contributions have built a bridge between the economic and psychological analyses of individual decision-making.” Thaler’s work was instrumental in pension reform, illustrating how subtle changes in framing can lead to dramatically different consumer choices. Thaler’s research contributed to policy changes including automatic enrollment of employees in 401(k) plans and the use of target date funds as the default option for new 401(k) enrollees instead of money market funds.
The benchmark indices settled marginally lower on Friday weighed by IT bellwether Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and select banking and automobile stocks.
The S&P BSE Sensex ended at 36,010, down 97 points or 0.27 per cent, while the broader Nifty50 index ended at 10,795, down 27 points or 0.25 per cent. On a weekly basis, the S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.88 per cent, while Nifty50 rose 0.63 per cent.
In the broader market, the S&P BSE MidCap index ended at 15,177, down 19 points or 0.13 per cent, while S&P BSE SmallCap index slipped 28 points or 0.19 per cent to 14,600.
Shares of Eveready Industries India (EIIL) jumped 13 per cent to settle at Rs 205 per share on the BSE on reports that promoter BM Khaitan is likely to sell the flagship company, a leader in dry cell batteries and flashlights.
IT bellwether Infosys gained 0.58 per cent to settle at Rs 684 on the BSE ahead of the board meeting today to consider the financial results for the third quarter of the financial year 2018-19 (FY19). Its peer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) declined 2.45 per cent to Rs 1,842 even as it earned its highest-ever net profit of Rs 8,105 crore in the seasonally weak third quarter (Q3) of 2018-19 (FY19).
One of our favorite investing books here at The Acquirer’s Multiple is The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks.
There’s one passage in particular in which Marks discusses how keeping one’s ego in check is the greatest formula for long-term wealth creation. Here’s an excerpt from the book:
The sixth key influence is ego. It can be enormously challenging to remain objective and calculating in the face of facts like these:
Mention value investing and the phrase brings up different connotations for different people.
Some investors see value as a style as a dead regime, something stuffy old investors like Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) live by, and their devout following of the strategy has cost them big time as they have missed out on some of the market’s best opportunities.
On the other hand, you have the devout value investors, those who remain fully committed to the strategy initially set out by Benjamin Graham and his partner David Dodd, all those years ago, even though this strategy has generated relatively lackluster returns over the past decade.
The domestic equity indices snapped out of a two-session losing streak to settle 0.5 per cent higher on Friday led by a rise in public sector banks and metal stocks.
The S&P BSE Sensex ended at 35,695, up 181 points or 0.51 per cent, while the broader Nifty50 index settled at 10,727, up 55 points or 0.52 per cent. On a weekly basis, the S&P BSE Sensex fell 1.05 per cent, while the Nifty 50 declined 1.22 per cent.
In the broader market, the S&P BSE MidCap index rose 0.48 per cent or 72 points to end the day at 15,148, while the S&P BSE SmallCap settled at 14,592, up 0.14 per cent or 20 points on Friday.
Among sectors, the Nifty PSU Bank rose the most on Friday, gaining 2.32 per cent led by Syndicate Bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB) and State Bank of India (SBI). Nifty Metal too, rose 1.40 per cent led by Jindal Steel & Power, Vedanta and Tata Steel.
The rupee traded on a firm note having risen to 69.75 against the US dollar in intra-day trade. The domestic unit had settled at 70.17 against the greenback on Thursday.
Successful trading is 90% waiting and 10% execution and that’s the exact reason why trading is so challenging. When people think about trading, they imagine a well-dressed Wall Street guy who angrily shouts at his monitors while being on the phone with London, Hong Kong and Tokyo simultaneously to place the next big killer trade which will make him a lot of money. Dead wrong!
In this article, I will show you my approach to trading and explain how you must trade calmly and in a relaxed state of mind if you want to be successful in this business.
I call myself a reversal or early trend trader which means that I look for established and mature trends that show signs of exhaustion. The general trading literature suggests that new traders start with the trend following approach but from my experience I have seen that the reversal approach does make more sense to most traders.
Reversal trading has a bad reputation because people believe that it’s all about trying to predict the next market turn before it happens which couldn’t be further from the truth. Reversal trading is often nothing but early trend following trading as we will see.
With so many articles dedicated to the debate on value stocks vs growth stocks I think it’s a good time to revisit what Seth Klarman calls ‘Value Pretenders’ in his best-selling book, Margin of Safety.
Here’s an excerpt from that book:
“Value investing” is one of the most overused and inconsistently applied terms in the investment business. A broad range of strategies makes use of value investing as a pseudonym.
Many have little or nothing to do with the philosophy of investing originally espoused by Graham. The misuse of the value label accelerated in the mid-1980s in the wake of increasing publicity given to the long-term successes of true value investors such as Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., Michael Price and the late Max L. Heine at Mutual Series Fund, Inc., and William Ruane and Richard Cunniff at the Sequoia Fund, Inc., among others. Their results attracted a great many “value pretenders,” investment chameleons who frequently change strategies in order to attract funds to manage.
These value pretenders are not true value investors, disciplined craftspeople who understand and accept the wisdom of the value approach. Rather they are charlatans who violate the conservative dictates of value investing, using inflated business valuations, overpaying for securities, and failing to achieve a margin of safety for their clients. These investors, despite (or perhaps as a direct result of) their imprudence, are able to achieve good investment results in times of rising markets.
Firm global cues and buying in financial and pharma counters helped domestic benchmark indices settle in the positive territory for the third consecutive session on Friday.
The S&P BSE Sensex gained 269 points or 0.75 per cent to close at 36,077 while the NSE’s Nifty50 index ended at 10,860, up 80 points or 0.74 per cent. Out of 50 constituents on the index, 38 ended in the green and rest 12 in the red.
Volatility benchmark India VIX declined over 6 per cent to 15.03, indicating lower volatility in the market.
As many as 8 stocks hit 52-week high on NSE including names such as Bata India and SPL Industries. On the contrary, 48 securities hit their one-year low.
On a weekly basis, both the headline indices rose around 1 per cent.