Graham And Doddsville

On October 29, 2005 Joe Nocera penned an article for The New York Times called The Heresy That Made Them Rich.

A FEW weeks ago, Columbia Business School held its 15th Annual Graham & Dodd Breakfast. The guest speaker was Jean-Marie Eveillard, a successful (and now retired) mutual fund manager, who used to beat the market regularly by adhering to the ”value investing” principles first articulated by the great investor Benjamin Graham and his co-author, the Columbia professor David L. Dodd, in their 1934 classic, ”Security Analysis.”

“The more things change, the more they stay the same way.”

Still, the Columbia program — and value investing in general — feels a little like a cult. Despite the obvious success of people like Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gabelli — and the studies that seem to bear out that success as something more than luck — it is not yet fully accepted by either mainstream Wall Street or mainstream academia. In his remarks at the breakfast, Mr. Eveillard said he thought that maybe 5 percent of professional money managers are true value investors.

See:  “The Heresy That Made Them Rich” (New York Times, 10/29/05)

The students of Columbia Business School just released the Spring 2013 Issue of Graham and Doddsville.

The new issue features Li Lu of Himalaya Capital, Preston Athey of T. Rowe Price, and Paul Isaac of Arbiter Partners.  In addition, this issue is packed with stock pitches from Columbia Business School MBA students, including ideas from the Pershing Square Challenge and the annual Moon Lee Prize.

Congratulations to the 2012 – 2013 second-year graduating editors Jay Hedstrom (CBS ’13), Jake Lubel (CBS ’13), and Sachee Trivedi (CBS ’13) on an outstanding job.  We also want to wish Richard Hunt (CBS ’14) and Stephen Lieu (CBS ’14) good luck as they assume the role of CSIMA Co-Presidents.

Keep up the great work CBS!

Check out the latest issue of Graham and Doddsville here.

See the Pershing Square Challenge winning pitch on Hertz here.

Read past issues of Graham and Doddsville here.

The students of Columbia Business School have released the 17th issue of Graham and Doddsville.

The Winter 2013 issue of Graham and Doddsville features Barry Rosenstein and Scott Ostfeld of Jana Partners, Frank Martin of Martin Capital, Russell Glass of RDG Capital, Daniel Krueger of Owl Creek Asset Management and Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and Jon Friedland of Amici Capital (formerly named Porter Orlin).

More great work from Columbia Business School!  As I say each time, keep up the great work CBS!!!

Check out the latest issue of Graham and Doddsville here.  For past issues click here.

As far as I know, this video premiered at the Columbia Student Investment Management Conference held on Friday, February 1, 2013. This is the first live footage of Benjamin Graham that I have ever seen and includes interviews with Warren Buffett, Irving Kahn, Benjamin Graham, Jr., Charles Brandes and many others.  More phenomenal work from The Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing and Columbia Business School.

I just watched 2 great videos. First, Columbia Business School Professor Bruce Greenwald participated in a seminar titled “Financial Innovation: A Risky Business?” which took place on September 7, 2012 at the Columbia University School of Journalism.

The second video is an interview of SuperInvestor Jean-Marie Eveillard posted by our friends at GreatInvestors.tv.  Jean-Marie Eveillard is among the investors that I most admire.  Click here to watch the interview.

For more on Bruce Greenwald click here.

For more on Jean-Marie Eveillard see here, here, and here.

Barron’s published an article this weekend titled “Graham and Doddsville Head Downtown” describing NYU’s first value investing class.  Jamie Rosenwald, co-founder of Dalton Investments, launched the class to let NYU MBA students in on a secret; one that is well known by uptown rival Columbia Business School.

Rosenwald, an engaging 54-year-old, attended NYU, too. “I was jealous that Columbia had street cred,” he says.

In Rosenwald’s class, students learn the basic tenets of value investing.

Buying companies at 50 cents on the dollar dramatically lessened a risk of loss. Intensive research also abridged the risk, and reduced the need to diversify. As day follows night, stock prices eventually reflect fundamentals. The students waded through Berkshire Hathaway’s annual reports and shareholder letters from renowned investor Seth Klarman of the Baupost Group.

Lessons learned through the writings of Buffett and Klarman are brought to life by top practitioners who are invited to address the class.

To bring the lessons home, he invited his fellow value investors to class. David Abrams of Boston’s Abrams Capital, who got his start with Klarman, told about an early and costly mistake, when he persuaded his boss to buy a fifth of a company that turned out to be a fraud. “Be very wary of book value,” Abrams warned the students. “The problem with Excel [spreadsheets] is that [they] give you a very false sense of precision.”

Bob Robotti, another prominent investor, got his start as an accountant. “You have to understand the numbers,” Robotti said. “But you don’t have to be Warren Buffett to do this right.”

As the birthplace of value investing, Columbia Business School has become known as the academic capital of value investing.  However, in between the days of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd and now, Columbia has also gone through periods where value investing fell out of favor.

Below are a few articles that discuss the resurgence of value investing at Columbia in the late 1990’s / early 2000’s.  I would like to think that this time will be different, and value investing at Columbia is here to stay.  Unfortunately, as value investors, we are all too aware that “Many shall be restored that are now fallen and many shall fall that are in honor.” (Horace – Ars Poetica)

“Value Hunting:  Columbia Students Bet on Ugly Ducklings” (Hermes, Fall 1994)

“The Heresy That Made Them Rich” (The New York Times, October, 29, 2005)

Click here to read the original Barron’s article “Graham and Dodd Head Downtown.”