The man who made “safe and cheap” a value investing mantra passed away earlier this month, according to a recent Bloomberg article. Whitman created the Third Avenue Value Fund in 1990 and, according to the article, during his tenure (ending in 2012) the fund earned an average return of 12 percent (versus 9 percent for the S&P 500). In 1990, he was named Morningstar’s mutual fund manager of the year. Raised in the Bronx, Whitman used… Read More
Robert “Chip” Rewey, who recently began to manage the Value and Small-Cap Value funds at Third Avenue Management, embraces an “intellectually honest investment style” by digging deep and avoiding the herd mentality. The Small-Cap fund is now beating 62% of its peers, up from 11%, and is doing slightly better than its benchmark Russell 2000 index. Rewey says that “the market is narrowing on these high-priced internet and media companies that seem to be getting… Read More
Legendary value investor Martin Whitman says Wall Street has it all wrong when it comes to investing. Whitman tells WealthTrack’s Consuelo Mack that the Street overemphasizes earnings, short-term issues, macroeconomics, and the alleged efficiency of markets, while being oblivious to other key factors like creditworthiness. He says it’s a “dangerous game to invest in poorly capitalized firms. His “growth at dirt cheap prices” (GADCP) approach requires a firm to have a “super strong financial position”,… Read More
Value investing legend Marty Whitman built his reputation by buying down-and-out stocks. And today, he says he still believes that’s the way to go. “You’re trying to figure out what the masses think are going to happen to the securities’ prices. Stock markets can be capricious,” Whitman tells Forbes. By investing in out-of-favor sectors of the market — and bargain-priced debt of companies going through bankruptcy restructuring — “you can buy things at 10 or… Read More
The latest issue of Columbia Business School’s Graham & Doddsville newsletter features interviews with three top investors, Leon Cooperman, Mario Gabelli, and Marty Whitman. (Tip of the cap to GuruFocus.com for highlighting the newsletter, which can be downloaded via this link.) In the wide-ranging interviews, Cooperman, Gabelli, and Whitman talk extensively about their own career paths, their broader investment strategies, and their take on the current market. Cooperman, for example, offers his take on why… Read More
Top value manager Marty Whitman says he’s finding a lot of U.S. stocks trading at attractive values right now, particularly in the high-tech arena. “We have a three-pronged approach to our investments in common stocks,” Whitman tells Barron’s in a recent interview. “One, we want the company to have a super strong financial position. Two, we buy at big discounts to readily ascertainable net asset value. And, three, we like to restrict investments to companies… Read More
Value investing legend Marty Whitman was one of those to speak at the recent Columbia Investment Management Conference, and The Manual of Ideas blog offered a good summary of Whitman’s comments (which came during a discussion with Columbia’s Bruce Greenwald). “At several points in the discussion with Prof. Greenwald, Mr. Whitman came back to a central theme: It is not sufficient for a security to be ‘cheap’,” writes Ravi Nagarajan for The Manual of Ideas. “It… Read More
Kiplinger’s recently asked six top strategists to give their take on investing and where the markets are headed from here. A sampling of the responses: Warren Buffett: While he says he has no idea where stocks will head in the short term, Buffett says that “over a ten-year period you will do considerably better owning a group of equities than you will owning Treasuries. In fighting the economic war, we’ve taken action that sows the… Read More
MarketWatch recently had an interesting piece on contrarian investment strategies, highlighting the fact that many of the contrarian managers who were hit hard last year are now netting some strong bounce-back gains. “As the market has bounced back in recent weeks, [several] contrarian-style funds, with their bargain-minded ways, have been outperforming,” writes MarketWatch’s Sam Mamudi, discussing well-known contrarian managers like David Dreman, Bill Miller, and Marty Whitman. “Dreman Contrarian Large Cap Value is up about… Read More
Marty Whitman, the illustrious Third Avenue Funds founder, tells Steve Forbes that he is seeing great opportunities in distressed debt and the equity markets, and is particularly bullish on Hong Kong blue chips. “From the top down, from the macro view, things could not suck more than they do suck,” Whitman said. “[But] from a bottom-up point of view, there have never been, in my lifetime, as attractive securities as are available today at the… Read More
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