A Book on Value Investing

Posted on by David Merkel

A medium-sized publisher has approached me to write a book on value investing.? I might do it, or I might not.? I also might try to do it with another publisher, or I might do it through Amazon.? I solicit advice from my readers on the prospect.

Anyway, I thought about what the book might look like, and to do so, I went through the entirety of my Value Investing category, and my page called Major Article List,? which described my best articles from my RealMoney days.

What you will see after this is less than a first draft of chapters.? I plan on categorizing it and simplifying, but here it is for now:

  1. Bonds
  2. Use of cash ? buybacks, dividends, strategic use, delay
  3. Valuation
  4. Cycles
  5. On being wrong ? planning for failure
  6. On financial companies
  7. Growth expectations
  8. Following leaders vs surfacing your own ideas; who are you playing with/against?
  9. Weighing vs Voting
  10. Use of free cash by management
  11. Avoid buggy whips
  12. Industry analysis and economic sensitivity
  13. Embrace trends, resist trends
  14. Take prudent risks
  15. Three year horizon
  16. Understand balance sheets; quality, anomalies
  17. Management incentives
  18. Discipline: tie your hands, do something, but don?t react; you are you own worst enemy
  19. Risks, not risk
  20. Markets are mostly, but not entirely efficient
  21. Margin of safety
  22. Diversify, but not too much
  23. Safe assets and Risk assets
  24. Avoid complexity; embrace complexity
  25. Sum of the parts
  26. Realistic expectations
  27. On shorting
  28. Ask the opposite question
  29. Rank your ideas
  30. No, macroeconomics *does* matter

This could be one, two or three books depending on me and the goals of the publisher.? As I read through my blog, I realized that I wrote a lot more about value investing at the beginning of this blog.? I think the crisis caused me to shift.

But as I went through what the book could look like, I got more excited about it — there is a lot of potential here to explain value investing in a comprehensive? way to readers.

PS — Any publisher contacts that you want to share are appreciated.? Thanks to those who have given me advice so far.