April 4th, 2010 
David Hill 
- ISBN13: 9780470683590
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“As with his weekly column, James Montier’s Value Investing is a must read for all students of the financial markets. In short order, Montier shreds the ‘efficient market hypothesis’, elucidates the pertinence of behavioral finance, and explains the crucial difference between investment process and investment outcomes. Montier makes his arguments with clear insight and spirited good humor, and then backs them up with cold hard facts. Buy this book for yourself, and … More >>
Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment
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I’ve read tons of value investing books and this one definitely ranks near the top. He uses a bunch of psychological examples of why certain inefficiencies exist. I highly reccommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5
Montier’s collection of essays provides a solid foundation for thinking and reasoning through your investment selections. It provides the reader with foundational understanding and application of Graham & Dodd for contemporary times. The roots in G&D and human (and crowd) psychology formed a base for the application of Value Investing principles to insinuate where you are in the market cycle. His emphasis on working with the known versus unknown (making predictions about the future price movements) is both blatant and necessary.
There are numerous references to one of his earlier books littered through every article/chapter… was the repetition supposed to make me purchase it?…a repetitious shameless plug… maybe it’s working!
Great book. Buy it. Read it. Apply it.
Rating: 5 / 5
I purchased this book some weeks ago, but finally had a chance to sit down with it this weekend at a coffee shop. My initial thought before I opened the cover was that it was yet another book on value investing. I would have been thrilled if I gleaned just a little tidbit from this tome. Boy, what an understatement. Montier has written a gem. It is an honor to be the first to post a review on Amazon because I feel like I “discovered” this book
Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment is a compendium of the author’s pieces and speeches while he was chief strategist at Societe Generale (he is presently at Grantham Mayo according to the dust jacket). For those fortunate enough to have all the author’s pieces from his SG days, this book may not be worth purchasing. For those of us who are not so fortunate, this book has more kernels of wisdom on value investing than any book I have read in years.
A quick synopsis:
Part I
Montier debunks much of the academic literature on efficient markets and CAPM. He takes much of the issues Buffett has with modern finance theory and goes into further detail. Unlike many books on value investing which often give a mystical air to the subject of value investing, he backs up many of his assertions with a plethora of data and studies . . . and he doesn’t mince words: Chapter Two is entitled CAPM is Cr-p*. Along the way, he provides value investing’s definition of risk which is very different from how “modern finance” defines risk, but it is a definition of risk that investors post-2008 can readily identify with. His chapter on the Danger of Discounted Cash Flows echoes the work of Rappaport and Maboussin but does it succinctly in a scant 9 pages
Part II
This section delves into the area of Behavioral Finance, which I gather has been the topic of his previous three books. The last chapter in this section addresses why value investing is so hard for many investors to implement and hence its continuing source of advantage for those who can overcome the psychological hurdles.
Part III
This section covers the philosophy of value investing. His “Ten Tenets of his Investment Creed” should be taped as a list to every value investor’s computer screen.
Part IV
This section focuses on empirical evidence from overseas and applies an old formula from Benjamin Graham’s playbook to global markets.
Part V
This section is unique among books on value investing in my opinion. It is devoted to short-selling. He provides a methodology and framework to finding short-sale candidates and empirical data on how well the methodology has worked over the years.
Part VI
This section entitled Real-time Value Investing contains articles from the 2008 and 2009 period. Unlike economists and many market strategists who hedge their calls sufficiently so that it is difficult to prove whether they are right or wrong, Montier is intellectually honest enough to put his thoughts during the recent financial crisis out in the open. Time will eventually tell if he was mostly right or wrong, but you have to admire his willingness to show where he stands.
I own over 500 books on investing. After you’ve read the first hundred or so, I think it is easy to become jaded and think nothing new has been written in years. Montier’s book proves me wrong. His book is an incredible “food for thought” for the thoughtful investor.
Rating: 5 / 5