John Neff on Investing

Amazon.com
In the investment-management business, it's best to take bows quickly. Unless, of course, you're John Neff, a living legend, who as manager of Vanguard's Windsor Fund beat the market in 22 out of 31 years. Neff grew Windsor to become the largest mutual fund by combing the bargain basement for quality merchandise and selling as other investors caught on. In John Neff on Investing, he explains how he scoured the daily list of stocks hitting new lows, the "dusty rag and bone shop of the market," to find out-of-favor companies with low price/earnings ratios, those growing faster than seven percent a year, that paid generous dividends. He shows how to distinguish misunderstood and overlooked stocks from those with lackluster prospects.

Shunning the terms value investor and contrarian, he tells us he prefers to be known simply as a "low-p/e investor." "Contrarian investor suggests a stubborn nature," he says, "and there's a thin line between contrarian and being just plain stubborn." Memory in the stock market is notoriously short. "Remember the lessons of the past as they tend to repeat themselves," Neff says. "You cannot become a captive of historical parallel, but you must be a student of history." He takes us back to the early '70s, the "silly season" he calls it, "when investors emphasized a handful of glamour stocks at the expense of the market.... Hypnotized by rising market levels, investors lost sight of fundamentals ... and a dazed and confused public became persuaded that investing is easy." The toughest investment decision is the decision to sell. "Successful stocks don't tell you when to sell," says Neff. "When you feel like bragging, it's probably time to sell." He quotes a French proverb: "Buy on the cannons, sell on the trumpets."

John Neff on Investing begins with an insightful autobiographical sketch, but the marrow of this book is the journey through Neff's investment diary while managing Windsor. He takes us through three turbulent decades and dissects in detail his investment successes and failures. Relying on relentless application of his low-p/e strategy, abetted by attention to fundamentals and a liberal dose of common sense, he repeatedly rode stocks from under- to fair valuation, most often leaving the overvaluation thrill ride to braver souls.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

John Neff has proven time and again over the past three decades that bucking the system can pay off big. During his illustrious career as a money manager, Neff flew in the face of conventional wisdom by consistently passing over the big growth stocks of the moment in favor of inexpensive, underperforming ones-and he usually won. During his thirty-one years as portfolio manager for Vanguard's Windsor and Gemini Funds, he beat the market twenty-two times, through every imaginable stock market climate, while posting a fifty-seven-fold increase in an initial stake. When Windsor closed its doors to new investors in 1985, it was the largest mutual fund in the United States.
* Now retired from mutual fund management, Neff is ready to share the investment strategies thatearned him international recognition as the "investor's investor." In John Neff on Investing, Neff delineates, for the first time, the principles of his phenomenally successful low p/e approach to investing, and describes the strategies, techniques, and investment decisions that earned him a place alongside Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch in the pantheon of modern investment wizards.
* Packed with solid advice and guidance for anyone who aspires to using Neff's unique brand of value investing, John Neff on Investing offers invaluable lessons on using price-earnings ratios as a yardstick, zeroing in on undervalued stocks, interpreting earnings histories, and anticipating new market climates. A narrative of Neff's early days-"My Road to Windsor"-reveals the extraordinary mindset and humble circumstances that shaped hiswinning investment philosophy.
* John Neff on Investing offers a unique opportunity towatch Neff in action over the years through excerpts from his personal investing journals. A faithful quarter-in-quarter-out chronicle of a life on Wall Street, the journals provide unprecedented insight into the thinking behind some of Neff's best (and worst) investment decisions, while tracing the evolution of his innovative investment style.
* The first book to reveal fully the long-heralded investment strategies of a Wall Street genius, John Neff on Investing is must reading for investors of every stripe.

FROM THE CRITICS

Robert Barker - Business Week

For frontline action and analysis, I prefer John Neff On Investing (Wiley with S.L. Mintz). Neff recalls how he hitchhiked from Toledo to New York in search of his first investment job. He didn't get it, winding up picking stocks for a Cleveland bank. He eventually made his way to the top job at Windsor Fund, where he beat the market in 22 of his 31 years. The book is a thoughtful blend of investment theory and autobiography, in which he recounts big contrarian victories in such stocks as Citicorp and Boeing. The best chapter, ''Elements of Style,'' makes a cogent case for buying stocks with low price-earnings ratios--a technique that, I caution you, seems to have retired along with Neff in 1995.

Publishers Weekly

From 1964 to 1995, Neff managed the large Windsor mutual fund, which consistently beat the stock market's average returns. In this wise and engaging volume, Neff and finance writer Mintz (Five Eminent Contrarians) team up to explain how Windsor did it and how smaller-scale investors might duplicate Neff's success. The result is half financial advice, half autobiography. Early chapters describe Neff's difficult family life in Texas and Michigan, his navy years and his early job in a Cleveland bank. Thereafter, Neff's investment advice alternates with year-by-year analyses of the market and of Windsor's performance. Neff and Mintz together craft clear, forceful prose, studded with personal asides: at the bank in Cleveland, "I was not inclined to play by their rules. Instead of bankers' pinstripes, I wore sport coats." Neff's core precept is simple: buy stocks that look bad to less-careful investors and hang on until their real value is recognized. This means seeking solid companies whose price/earnings ratios look low. "I've never bought a stock," he declares, "unless, in my view, it was on sale." That's not new advice, but Neff's success proves that he knows how to apply it: patience and willpower, he informs us, matter as much as (though not more than) rapt attention to business news and company reports. Bad analysis had almost sunk the Windsor fund when he arrived; Neff's first years there saw "go-go practitioners" and "adrenaline funds" temporarily surpass his returns, then collapse while Windsor persevered. Today's NASDAQ and Internet stock booms, Neff warns, looks like trends from ages past: they, too, will eventually weaken. Readers seeking up-to-the-minute stock tips or get-rich-quick advice may not like the message Neff delivers, but cooler heads seeking to make money over the long haul should enjoy, and benefit from, finding out how Neff invested very, very well. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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