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Senin, 27 Oktober 2008

The Greatest Investors: John Neff

John Neff

Source: CFA Institute

Born:

Wauseon, Ohio, in 1931

Affiliations:

  • National City Bank of Cleveland
  • Wellington Management Company

Most Famous For:

John Neff's average annual total return from Vanguard's Windsor Fund during his 31-year tenure (1964-1995) as portfolio manager was 13.7%, against a similar return from the S&P 500 Index of 10.6%. He showed a great consistency in topping the market's return by beating the broad market index 22 times during his tenure and was regularly in the top percent of money managers.

He was considered the "professional's professional," because many fund managers entrusted their money to him with the belief that it would be in safe hands.


Personal Profile
Neff graduated suma cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toledo in 1955. While working as a securities analyst with the National City Bank of Cleveland, where he stayed for eight years, he obtained his Master of Business Administration from Case Western Reserve University in 1958.

He joined the Wellington Management Co. in 1964, becoming the portfolio manager of the Windsor, Gemini and Qualified Dividend funds. He retired in 1995 after more than three decades of spectacular, market-beating investment results. Neff's investing autobiography, "John Neff On Investing",was published in 2001.

Investment Style
John Neff did not describe himself as either a value or contrarian investor, preferring instead to characterize his investing approach to one of buying "good companies, in good industries, at low price-to-earnings prices." Despite his value-contrarian investor disclaimer, Neff's investment management career shows a considerable amount of this type of investing strategy.

Neff practiced portfolio concentration over diversification. He pursued stocks of all sizes – large, small, and medium – as long as they evidenced low P/E ratios, which he described as "low P/E investing." Two of Neff's favorite investing tactics were to buy on bad news after a stock had taken a substantial plunge and to take "indirect paths" to buying in to popular industries. This involved, for example, buying manufacturers of drilling pipe that sold to the "hot stock" (too pricey for Neff) oil service companies.

He preached against participating in "adrenaline markets" (momentum driven) and preferred face-to-face meetings with a company's management to assess its integrity and effectiveness. For most individual investors, this type of contact is not a realistic possibility; however, using Neff's rigorous fundamental analysis techniques as applied to a company's financials will turn up enough management performance indicators to compensate for the inability to directly interact with a company's managers.

As noted by Ryan Furman in his July 2006 interview with Neff for the Motley Fool, "most great investors are serious bookworms." John Neff is no exception: "He gained notoriety for taking all of his weekly Wall Street Journal copieshome for a second read during the weekend." Furman also reported that Neff reads Value Line religiously. Stock investors would be well advised, like Neff, to give these two sources of investing guidance as much attention as possible.

Publications

  • "John Neff On Investing" by John Neff and Steven L. Mintz (2001)


Quotes

"It's not always easy to do what's not popular, but that's where you make your money. Buy stocks that look bad to less careful investors and hang on until their real value is recognized."

"I've never bought a stock unless, in my view, it was on sale."

"Successful stocks don't tell you when to sell. When you feel like bragging, it's probably time to sell."

investopedia.com

Senin, 20 Oktober 2008

The Greatest Investors: Jesse L. Livermore

Jesse L. Livermore

Born:

South Acton, Massachusetts, in 1877; Died in 1940

Affiliations:

Individual investor

Most Famous For:

Jesse Livermore was a highly visible stock trader and speculator for almost fifty years. He was famous for making and losing several multimillion dollar fortunes during his professional career.


Personal Profile
In his early teens, Livermore left home to escape a life of farming. He went to Boston and started his long career in stock trading by posting stock quotes for the Paine Webber brokerage firm.

He then began trading for himself and by the age of fifteen, he had reportedly produced gains of over $1,000, which was big money in those days. Over the next several years, he made money betting against the so-called "bucket shops," which didn't handle legitimate trades – customers bet against the house on stock price movements.

He did so well that he was banned from all of the shops in Boston, which prompted his move, at age 20, to New York where his speculative trading successes - and failures - made him a celebrity on Wall Street and around the world. His financial ups and downs finally ended tragically with his suicide death at the age of 63.

Investment Style
Jesse Livermore had no formal education or stock trading experience. He was a self-made man who learned from his winners as well as his losers. It was these successes and failures that helped cement trading ideas that can still be found throughout the market today.

Some of the major principles that he employed include:

  • Money is not made in day trading on price fluctuations. Livermore emphasized the importance of focusing on markets as a whole, rather than on individual stocks. He noted that greater success comes from determining the direction of the overall market than attempting to pick the direction of an individual stock without concern for market direction.
  • Adopt a buy-and-hold strategy in a bull market and sell when it loses momentum. Livermore always had an exit strategy in place.
  • Study the fundamentals of a company, the market and the economy. Livermore separated successful investors from unsuccessful investors by the level of effort they put into investing.
  • Investors who focus on the short term eventually lose their capital.
  • Ignore insider information; make your own independent analysis. Livermore was very careful about where he got his information and recommended using multiple sources.
  • Embrace change in adapting investing strategies to evolving market conditions.


Publications

  • "How to Trade in Stocks"by Jesse Livermore (1940)
  • "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre (1923)
  • "Jesse Livermore – Speculator King" by Paul Sarnoff (1985).
  • "Trade Like Jesse Livermore" by Richard Smitten(2004).


Quotes

"Profits always take care of themselves but losses never do."

"The average man doesn't wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn't even wish to have to think."

"When it comes to selling stocks, it is plain that nobody can sell unless somebody wants those stocks. If you operate on a large scale, you will have to bear that in mind all the time.”

investopedia.com

Senin, 13 Oktober 2008

The Greatest Investors: James D. Slater

Born:

U.K., in 1929

Affiliations:

  • Leyland Motor Corporation
  • Slater Walker Securities
  • BioProjects International PLC
  • Galahad Gold PLC

Most Famous For:

The author of an investment column in London's The Sunday Telegraph under the pen name of "The Capitalist," which became a forum for publicizing his personal stock investment methodology. His strategies were one of the first to be made widely available to the investing public in the U.K.

Jim Slater is credited with inventing the price-earnings to earnings-growth ratio (PEG) and popularizing its use in America through his book, "The Zulu Principle" (1992).


Personal Profile
Slater began his career as a chartered accountant and then moved into corporate managerial positions from 1953 to 1963 with three different U.K. manufacturing firms, the last of which was the prominent Leyland Motor Corporation. In 1964, he and Peter Walker founded an investment company called Slater Walker Securities. Through this firm, Slater became famous as a major player in the U.K. in aggressive corporate takeovers, building Slater Walker into a significant industrial and financial conglomerate, which, in 1969, evolved into an investment bank.

Unfortunately for Slater, his successful career in investment banking came to an abrupt end with the collapse of Slater Walker Securities during the U.K.'s 1973-74 recession, leaving Slater personally bankrupt.

He fought his way back to solvency through private investing and launched a career as a financial writer. His widely read investment column, "The Capitalist," and an extremely popular investment advisory service called "Company REFS," which provided "really essential financial statistics" on all publicly traded U.K. companies, positioned Slater as an investment guru.

He became known as one of his country's most successful professional investors. A parallel career as an educator of individual investors and as an author of children's books flourished. In 2007, he remained active today as a major investor in a variety of small, growth-oriented companies.

Investment Style
The stock picking strategy that Slater employed developed from the columns he wrote under the pseudonym "Capitalist" in London's Sunday Telegraph, and which subsequently formed the basis for his "Zulu Principle" of investing. Slater's favored type of investment was the small growth company that was undervalued by the market - a so-called hidden gem. At the core of his methodology is his focus on finding small growth stocks before they hit the big time.

The main tool, which Slater invented and popularized to find this type of stock, was his pioneering price-earnings to growth ratio, or PEG. This equation combines growth and value investing. The formula compares a company's price-earnings ratio with its expected, or estimated, earnings per share growth rate.

Slater realized that a P/E ratio didn't mean that a stock was expensive as long as its earnings growth was high. For example, if company's stock was at a relatively high P/E of 30, but its earnings were expected to grow at a rate of 30%, it would have a PEG of 1, which is generally considered a very favorable value relationship. Slater pioneered the use of the PEG ratio, which today is widely used in investment analysis.

Publications

  • "Investment Made Easy" by Jim Slater(1995)
  • "The Zulu Principle: Making Extraordinary Profits from Ordinary Shares" by Jim Slater (1992).
  • "Beyond The Zulu Principle: Extraordinary Profits From Growth Shares" by Jim Slater(2000)
  • "How To Become A Millionaire" by Jim Slater(2000).
  • "Make Money While You Sleep" by Jim Slater (2002).


Quotes

"Most leading brokers cannot spare the time and money to research smaller stocks. You are therefore more likely to find a bargain in this relatively under-exploited area of the stock market."

Highlighting what Slater thought was the inherent greater potential for the growth of smaller companies, he said, "I once compared a very large company with an elephant by making the comment that elephants don't gallop."

"You get out of an investment what you put into it, so the first decision you have to make is how much time you are prepared to devote to the initial task of acquiring a basic knowledge of investment.

investopedia.com

Senin, 06 Oktober 2008

The Greatest Investors: George Soros


George Soros

Born:

Budapest, Hungary, in 1930

Affiliations:

  • F.M. Mayer
  • Wertheim & Company
  • Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder
  • Soros Fund Management

Most Famous For:

George Soros gained international notoriety when, in September of 1992, he risked $10 billion on a single currency speculation when he shorted the British pound. He turned out to be right, and in a single day the trade generated a profit of $1 billion – ultimately, it was reported that his profit on the transaction almost reached $2 billion. As a result, he is famously known as the "the man who broke the Bank of England."

Soros is also famous for running the Quantum Fund, which generated an average annual return of more than 30% while he was at the helm. Along with the famous pound trade, Soros was also cited by some as the "trigger" behind the Asian financial crisis in 1997, as he had a large bet against the Thai baht.
He is also widely known for his political activism and philanthropic efforts.


Personal Profile
Soros fled Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952 and then obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank in London. In 1956, he immigrated to the United States and held analyst and investment management positions at the New York firms of F.M. Mayer (1956-59), Wertheim & Co. (1959-63) and Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder (1963-73).

Soros went off on his own in 1973, founding the hedge fund company of Soros Fund Management, which eventually evolved into the well-known and respected Quantum Fund. For almost two decades, he ran this aggressive and successful hedge fund, reportedly racking up returns in excess of 30% per year and, on two occasions, posting annual returns of more than 100%.


In the late 1980s, he gave up the day-to-day management of the Quantum Fund and, as one of the wealthiest people in the world, became a substantial philanthropist, donating huge sums worldwide through his Open Society Foundation.

In recent years, political activism has also become important to Soros. He has written and lectured extensively on the role of the U.S. in world affairs as well as issues dealing with, among others, human rights, political freedom and education.

When Soros was offered an honorary degree from Oxford University and was asked how he wanted to be described, he is quoted as saying: "I would like to be called a financial, philanthropic and philosophical speculator." This surely sums up the life of George Soros, particularly if the adjectival phrase "very successful" is added to the description.

Investment Style
George Soros was a master at translating broad-brush economic trends into highly leveraged, killer plays in bonds and currencies. As an investor, Soros was a short-term speculator, making huge bets on the directions of financial markets. He believed that financial markets can best be described as chaotic. The prices of securities and currencies depend on human beings, or the traders - both professional and non-professional - who buy and sell these assets. These persons often act out based on emotion, rather than logical considerations.

He also believed that market participants influenced one another and moved in herds. He said that most of the time he moved with the herd, but always watched for an opportunity to get out in front and "make a killing." How could he tell when the time was right? Soros has said that he would have an instinctive physical reaction about when to buy and sell, making is strategy a difficult model to emulate.

When he fully retired in 2000, he had spent almost 20 years speculating with billions of other people's money, making him - and them - very wealthy through his highly successful Quantum Fund. He made some mistakes along the way, but his net results made him one of the world's wealthiest investors in history.

Publications

  • "The Alchemy Of Finance" by George Soros (1988)
  • "Soros On Soros: Staying Ahead Of The Curve" by George Soros(1995)
  • "Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism" by George Soros(2001)
  • "The Bubble Of American Supremacy: Correcting The Misuse Of American Power"by George Soros(2003)
  • "Soros: The Life And Times Of A Messianic Billionaire" by Michael Kaufman(2002)


Quotes

"It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."

"I rely a great deal on animal instincts."

"Playing by the rules, one does the best he can, irrespective of the social consequences. Whereas in making the rules, people ought to be concerned with the social consequences and not with their personal interests."

"George opened all of our thinking to macroeconomic theory, and he made globalists of us all by making us understand the importance of geopolitical events on the U.S. economy." (Byron Wien, Morgan Stanley)

investopedia.com