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Amazon.co.uk Review
Broadly speaking, growth investors seek those companies with fast growing earnings; value investors, of which Neff is one, seek those companies that other investors have discarded into the waste heap. Neff teaches how to sift through the rubble to uncover those valuable gems and nuggets that others ignore. He says, "if you do the work and answer the right questions, you can dine out on the down-and-out".
The book divides roughly into three: the first third is his Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches story: how all the New York investment banks turned up their noses at this mid-western lad; but he had the last laugh. The second section is where the meat is. Neff outlines techniques which value investors can employ to pick shares. He preaches a key indicator for readers to use to determine whether the company's growth prospects and low price warrants an investment. Neff provides numerous examples. The third section is a year-by-year description of his investment decisions, where he offers insights about the rational behind the decisions.
Over the last decade, value investing has fallen by the wayside, in favour of growth investing with a technological bent. Many investment managers have changed their style to meet the demands of retail and institutional investors. Neff believes this is a mistake. He says those that follow stock to towering heights do so at their own peril: "The capacity of investors to believe in something too good to be true seems almost infinite at times", especially at a market peak.
Neff, speaking from a vantage of a lifetime in the market, argues that staying the value course always wins out. This is a great handbook for those new to the game as well as the most seasoned portfolio managers. --Bruce McWilliams --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Financial Times, 6th November 1999
A FREEZING MORNING, in early January 1955, marked the start of my investment career. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well written "big picture" of low p/e investing,
By A Customer
This review is from: John Neff on Investing (Paperback)
A very enjoyable read written in a non conventional style. Neff starts the book with a brief praecy of his life as a way to highlight his non traditional, or contrarian approach to investing. The second part of the book is where the "real meat" is contained. Neff writes about the indicators that he used to identify companies with investment potential, or in todays terminology the "stock screening process" that he went through. Once he has identified stocks worthy of further investigation then he progresses to a deep "fundamental" analysis of the stock. the only reason that I did not award this book 5 stars is that he says very little about what fundamental analysis means to him. I guess I shall be buying Security Analysis by Benjamin Graham :-)
5.0 out of 5 stars
John Neff gives back,
By
This review is from: John Neff on Investing (Hardcover)
Many of the investing legends, such as Warren Buffett, have someone that influenced their investment philosophy. For John Neff it was Sidney Robbins, a follower of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. This book is about investing, but also about John Neff's personal life story. By reading about Neff's life experiences and his personality, readers can understand why value investing is such a good fit for him.
In Chapter 7, the author explains his investment style that his firm used whether the market was up, down, or indifferent. His investment criteria boils down to: * Low price-earnings (p/e) ratio * Fundamental growth in excess of 7 percent * Yield protection (and enhancement, in most cases) * Superior relationship of total return to p/e paid * No cyclical exposure without compensating p/e multiple * Solid companies in growing fields * Strong fundamental case I highly recommend this book to any investor. Next time you think about broad diversification, just remember this quote by John Neff, "You can diversify yourself into mediocrity." - Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.8 out of 5 stars (23 customer reviews) 33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wisdom of the Ages,
By Randy N. Myers - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: John Neff on Investing (Hardcover)
Mutual fund managers who can beat the market for a couple of years are a dime a dozen. Mutual fund managers who can beat the market for a couple of decades are practically unheard of. Which is why almost every investor has heard of John Neff. In his 31 years as a bargain-hunting fund manager, he beat the market in 22 of them. By the time he retired a few years ago, a dollar invested in his Windsor Fund in 1964 would have returned $56, versus $22 for the S&P 500.In JOHN NEFF ON INVESTING, one of the true masters of Wall Street tells us exactly how he compiled this amazing record. With collaborator Steven Mintz, he explains what kinds of stocks he looked for (in a nutshell, low p/e stocks of companies growing earnings in excess of 7% annually, often paying a respectable dividend) and a long list of qualifications concerning just what makes one low p/e stock better than another. (A low p/e company growing too fast is suspect. A dividend yield isn't always a must. Cyclical stocks should offer lower p/e multiples. The list goes on and on.) Just as importantly, Neff shares the wisdom of a lifetime in the investment business, outlining the pitfalls that can trap the unwary investor. (See Chapter 9, CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF A LOW P/E PORTFOLIO. The meat of Neff's discussion of his investment style is included in the middle third of the book. Armed with this advice, an investor can easily begin to screen the stock market for companies that fit the Neff mold. (MSN MoneyCentral Investor, at www.investor.msn.com, offers a powerful and free screening tool. There are many others.) Elsewhere, Neff devotes the first third of his book to talking about his formative years in the investment business prior to taking over the Windsor Fund. In the final third of the book, he provides a journal describing his investment activities at the helm of the Windsor Fund. He talks about critical buy-sell decisions, why he made them, and how they worked out ... and also describes the ever-changing market environment in which he was making them. (Reading this book is a great reminder that large-cap growth stocks don't always lead the market, as they have for the past five years. As such, it should help investors be better prepared the next time market leadership changes.) If you had the chance to sit down and talk with John Neff for a few weeks about his career and his investment style, what you would get, though likely not so well structured, would be this book. I'd love to spend those weeks with John Neff. But I wouldn't give up the chance to have read this book, either. Few investors have achieved more than Neff, and his story deserves a place on any investor's reading list. ### 36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but expected better,
By Doug Smith - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: John Neff on Investing (Hardcover)
I was looking forward to reading this book to provide some help in managing my mostly value oriented stock portfolio but was disappointed. The middle of the book (Chapt. 7) provides some useful tools and ideas on screening for value stocks but Part Three which chronicles Mr. Neff's thirty one year management of Windsor confirms that his strategies are strictly for 60 hour a week,eat,breath and die the stock market professionals. Application of ideas by Peter Lynch from "One Up on Wall Street" and "Beating the Street" are a piece of cake compared to this. Mr Neff's strategy appears to involve constant combing of the stock market universe to identify stocks reaching their absolute lowest PE ratio, buying, then holding until they reach "fair value" which sometimes can occur relatively quickly. Entire positions are then eliminated to be replaced by new stocks reaching their lowest PE ratio. Almost perfect market timing of both the buy and sell sides of his strategy look to have been a crucial part of Mr. Neff's success at Windsor. To Mr. Neff's credit, he does not claim that his strategies can be well adopted by the average investor as Mr. Lynch does. We are then left with a book that serves more as a vehicle for Mr. Neff to point with pride to his record at Windsor and a history of his early personal life. Mr. Neff's idea of "inflection points" in the market is useful and in Chapt. 14 "Deja Vu" where he covers the current market he appears to predict the recent correction in NASDAQ and internet stocks. The book is unusually silent on 1994-95, the last two years of his management when Windsor underperformed the S&P 500 although earlier periods of underperformance are well covered. The book although published in 1999 is to no surprise silent on the abysmal underperformance of Windsor from 95-99 by Mr. Neff's disciple Mr. Freeman although Mr. Freeman is highly praised in the book. The book is an interesting narrative on management of a mutual fund and contains some useful information on the market and stock selection but not nearly as helpful as hoped for. 13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nitty Gritty of Value Investing,
By John Thackray "jthackray" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: John Neff on Investing (Hardcover)
There are thousands of books that give investment advice: "buy this", "sell that", etc. John Neff reveals how a successful contratian investor actually does the homework, the analysis, and makes and sticks to his judgements. There are no pat formulas here, but wonderful display of a great financial reasoner doing his stuff in all kinds of market conditions. Neff's returns from 1964 to 1995 were double the S&P's because of his way of interpreting the economic scene and his determination to find values where others saw dreck. His story is described in fast-paced language and a wry sense of humor. Some people might argue that today's market conditions are unique, so what's the point of dredging up and discussing the market of 10 and 15 years ago. And okay "value investing" is not very fashionable, since recent value funds have under-performed against the averages. But that is precisely the kind of opportunity that Neff just loved to wade into, when value stocks were a bargain. After the current technology and IPO frenzy has subsided, the Neff approach will be what investors turn to. This is not a how-to book: better it turns on a light inside the mind of one of the few professional investors to beat the market over many decades.
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