the plot thickens! I'm sure you have to see the irony of having someone who doesn't have any money invest your money? you do see that, right? let alone a college kid. for your sake, I certainly hope you are the next buffet. But, I'll take my chances and play it safe....if you are some prodigy, I'll be the first to admit it I talked trash. But, I'm not too worried about eating that crow.

When's the newsletter coming out?

How about I post a portfolio sometime tonight for the board? I'll also include all the indexes and ETF's that I will be using for my own personal forums. I'll make a thread on it and post there. And not only that, I'll make a second portfolio in 3 months time. That way you won't just be able to claim that I got lucky with a single portfolio.

Hardly a kid. Just someone who went back to school after 6 months of being out of work. I happen to be 32 years old currently. I'm merely attending college so I can get a somewhat decent job that will actually allow me to save up some money.

I may have seen an ad for a subscription.

So...can we infer that you never went to/finished college, didn't have a decent job before getting laid off, & had no money saved up for emergencies like this but yet you have a new fangled, sure fire stock picking method that no one else has that's sure to make money fall from the sky?

Of course I had some money saved up. It just wasn't much and months without work meant saying goodbye to it.

And value investing has been around for a long time now. You might consider chapter 14 of the 2006 revised version of "The Intelligent Investor" (First published in 1949) to be a small step towards value investing itself, as it recommends the P/E ratio for any stock you invest in to be 15 or less. However, this classic book on investing simply cannot be compared to "What Works on Wall Street" (Fourth Edition) when it comes to learning about value investing. Where there are a few words in "The Intelligent Investor" on the P/E ratio, there are 20 pages dedicated to the P/E ratio in "What Works on Wall Street". Many other value factors are covered as well. Even some growth factors are covered. Additionally, sector performances are covered.

Quite a few of us have read The Intelligent Investor.

. . . Totally tiny minor side note, isn't the "The Intelligent Investor" by Graham? Bernstein does proposes the same idea in "The Four Pillars of Investing," though. So, you're pretty much just right in two different ways.

John Bogle also says the same thing in "Common Sense on Mutual Funds." After adjustments have been made for risk, value and growth investment returns are essentially dead even. Value investor demand higher returns to compensate them for higher risk. If there were not more risk involved, why wouldn't everyone simply plow their money in to value stocks?

Matt, have you considered perhaps diversifying your influences in investment theory? While I disagree with the theory you espouse, I am more unsettled by the lack of diversification in the information you present. When challenged, you fall back on this book you keep pimping out--one single source of information. Maybe consider tempering your views with a few more diversified and historically respected voices (such as those mentioned above) before you begin gambling the savings of others on one man's evaluation of a set of data (As a wise man once said of data interpretation, "Sometimes you just have to beat the data until it confesses." I fear your data has been thoroughly flogged. . .) As the Proverbs say, there is wisdom in a multitude of counselors.

Yes. You're right of course. I was thinking of Bernstein's "The Intelligent Asset Allocator" where he expands on what he says in four Pillars.

Actually, it's in reverse order. He wrote The Intelligent Asset Allocator first. The Four Pillars of Investing was his attempt to simplify the contents of the former to where he felt it could be easily absorbed by the average liberal arts graduate. Apparently, he didn't feel that he succeeded in this because he followed that up a few years later with an even more basic tome, The Investor's Manifesto.