Knowing the secret to finding a company valued at a $1 but costs only 40c
According to Buffett, this was the secret to Schloss’ investment success.
Schloss had an extraordinary talent for picking stocks when they were hitting new lows and finding one’s trading at prices lower than their book values per share.
And his broader investment philosophy followed simple truths like:
1. Don’t try to time the market
2. Don’t trust management
3. Ignore market noise
4. Don’t let your emotions rule your investment decisions
5. Invest in what you know and understand
6. Know when to sell
7. And he followed a checklist before he bought a company
For instance the stock should have
- a good track record
- no long term debt
- low price to book value ratio
- high insider ownership
But the crux of his philosophy was that if you could buy a company cheap, relative to its value and then hold on long enough, a depressed company was bound to turn around as long as the company’s fundamentals were sound.
What Walter Schloss was, was a super successful Value Investor!
He may not have had a formal education but he was a student of the Benjamin Graham School of Value Investing and throughout his career, he stayed true to the core principles of value investing.
So why is Schloss’ investment secret so relevant to the market today?
Because in 2021, a megashift began to take place in our stockmarkets, the era of supercharged tech, cryptos, and high growth stock prices started to show signs of a crack forming in the ballooning valuations of companies like Zoom, Netflix, Peloton and Prosus.
I’m sure you saw how some of these stock’s prices halved!
And in October 2021, Fortune Magazine identified this mega market shift, saying a specific group of overlooked stocks “are poised to make a killing over the next decade.”
This overlooked, unloved, unsexy group of stocks they were referring to were what Schloss, Graham and Buffett built their fortunes on.
I’m talking about Value Stocks…
Now, according to a Price Rowe study, this rotation in the markets from growth to value typically occurs every 10 years, If you think back, from 2010 to 2020, growth stocks have pretty much dominated the markets. But it is clear now the tide is turning.
We are already seeing the signs…
Here are three examples of Value stocks that have already hit lift off in the last 12 months right here on the JSE.