Sunday, April 25, 2010

New Era Value Investing: Chapter 1

As the chief investment officer at Fremont Investment Advisors, Nancy Tengler employed the value approach she describes in her book, New Era Value Investing.

Tengler starts the book by discussing how value investors don't get sucked in by the "It's different this time" crowd. When certain industries or companies are out of favour in the market, that is often the best time to buy them.

Nevertheless, the market has changed in some ways over time, and value investors can refine their methods to identify more undervalued stocks. Some of the methods employed by traditional value investors can be more difficult to apply as the market evolves. For example, the percentage of companies in high-tech or growth areas has increased over the years, while the relative size of dividends has decreased. For example, technology and health care stocks have doubled to 30% of the S&P 500 since 1990. This has served to reduce the playing field for value investors looking to apply traditional methods of company analysis.

Despite these new methods that Tengler will discuss in this book, the principle of having a disciplined approach to buying stocks that trade at discounts to their intrinsic values still remains. As such, she argues her new methods are not suggesting that "it's different this time", but are rather meant to expand the securities in which value investors may show an interest.

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