Value Investing with the Masters: 6

by Kirk Kazanjian

Book Overview

Kazanjian (Wizards of Wall Street), a former executive and business journalist, offers q & a style interviews with leading value investors, those who specialize in finding undervalued stocks and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735203210
• ISBN13: 9780735203211
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Prentice Hall Press
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Value Investing makes sense. However, don't get hyped and certainly, no one will promise you 15%,

Christopher Brown 1. First look for stocks with a Price/Earning or Price/Book less than 80% of all stocks. 2. These stocks must outperform the indexes 3. Make sure the company has good management and solid plans and strategies for growth 4. Focus on stocks with above market returns (7%). The stocks market returns must exceed the cost of money and inflation. 5. Invest and hold 6. Act like a business owner of the stock and now a momentum trader 7. The top money managers with 20 year records are value guys. Take for example, American Express, this stock compound 22%, for 10 years. David Dreman 1. Buy low Price/Book, Low Price/Earnings, low Price/Cash flow stocks. 2. Contrarian investing has out performed markets spanning 50 years and the S & P for the last 10 years. 3. Buy good blue-chip stocks, which, on the whole, are growth stocks with 10-15 % growth. 4. Seek a solid balance sheet and above average dividends 5. Volatility is helpful. Contrarians are looking for top-performing stocks that have been knocked down. They love bear markets. Bear markets represent bargins, too buy cheap, wait until the market recognizes the value, and sell when price changes and other factors combine to suggest a sell. Bear markets allow the contrarian to purchase 10,20, 30 percent growers at a cheap price. William Fries 1. Emerging franchises are younger companies and represent good potential for growth and emergence into saturated markets. 2. Establish a target price based on 12 to 18 month interval. Note that an analyst has 1/14 billion chance predicting price within 5%. 3. As a stock reaches its 12 to 18 month target price; we look to see what has changed. 4. One of the biggest mistakes is to sell emerging franchises to early. 5. The sale of really great companies can lead to lost opportunities. James Gilligan 1. I'm particularly interested in how the company is getting to profitability a. By examining trends in sales and administrative expenses b. We want to see how the ratios stack up against the competition 2. To determine normalized earnings, we predict what sales should be, and then put a margin that the company has been able to generate over time on those sales. a. Historically, 8 times Peak earnings to get Price 3. If the current earning estimate is higher than normalized earnings, we are not interested. a. The best companies grow between 8-15% b. The return on capital that exceeds the cost of capital c. Sell a stock when the story turns out wrong or when you find something better. James Gipson 1. Buy companies that can be easily understood. 2. When buying a stock, look at what might go wrong. Weight out the risks. 3. Sell when the price goes up or the value goes down. 4. Hold as long as the stock has value, the company is growing, and operations are good 5. Measure the value in ratio to the cash flow 6. Buy a stock that over the next 5 years will outperform the market 7. The market between 2000-2010 prediction is that it will experience a 10% re

Must reading for investors of all types

While I'm an advocate of the value investing approach, this book is essential reading for all investors (even believers in growth). The author has put together a very eclectic group of outstanding investors. He presents them with excellent questions, and gets them to reveal in detail how they choose stocks. While I took several investment courses in college, I found the advice in this book to be more valuable than anything I learned in school. It's the kind of book you'll want to read, underline, and re-read many times throughout your investment life.

Got this for graduation

I got this book for graduation and enjoyed every page of it. I learned a lot about how professional investors choose stocks, and it put what's going on in the current market into better context for me. The profiles are all concise and to the point, and I was surprised about how much the managers were willing to reveal about how they uncover investments. (By the way, I was reading through some of the other reviews. It seems like one person keeps writing the same unfounded negative review over and over. Unfortunately, it's clear this person hasn't read the book. It has nothing to do with technology stocks or the bubble.)

Best investment book I've read in a long time

I found this to be a very good book on not only value investing, but investing in general. I don't think some of the other reviewers have read the book, based on some of the other reviews. There is very little mention of technology stocks, other than in the context of whether they are values after the bubble. And the information is very timely, and even looks at investing in this post September 11 world. I found the book to be full of timeless investment insights, and Kazanjian has the masters update much of what was previously written about value investing by Graham and Dodd.

Excellent Book and Very Timely

I found this book to be an excellent overview of both value investing and what's going on in the market today. Value is the only strategy that has been working in recent years. More importantly, it has stood the test of time. That's probably why Buffett practices it. This book presents candid strategies from lots of long-time legends, including Martin Whitman, Bill Miller, Charles Royce, and David Dreman. But it also includes interviews with several younger value investors. It's full of valuable insights that every serious investor looking to make money in this market should read. I highly recommend it. You might also check out Kazanjian's other interview-based book "Wizards of Wall Street," which is also an insightful read.