Investor and blogger Saj Karsan, who runs the excellent Barel Karsan – Value Investing site, reviewed a copy of Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations. Saj often writes on his blog about the same stocks I buy, so I figured he would give the book a fair hearing. In Deep Value, Saj writes:
I really enjoyed Toby Carlisle’s latest, Deep Value. There are a lot of books that offer compelling stories, but to my mind the plural of anecdote is not statistic. On the other hand, books heavy on the stats tend to bore their readers to sleep. For me, Deep Value was the perfect blend of real-life investing stories combined with the stats necessary to make for a convincing argument.
Most chapters focus on a protagonist who is on a quest for better returns. You may recognize some of them, including Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett, but you may not others (or at least I didn’t), including Ron Brierley. In this way, the book reminded me a lot of (the heavily-recommended by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) Business Adventures, but with a focus on investor activism rather than general business.
But unlike a lot of books I have read, the story-telling does not complete the tale. Carlisle examines the factors that lead to success in activism, thus giving passive investors the opportunity to predict (statistically) which stocks are most likely to attract an activist. At this point, the book reminded me of…
Read the remainder of Saj’s Deep Value.
Buy Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations (hardcover or Kindle, 240 pages, Wiley Finance) from Wiley Finance, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.
Here’s your book for the fall if you’re on global Wall Street. Tobias Carlisle has hit a home run deep over left field. It’s an incredibly smart, dense, 213 pages on how to not lose money in the market. It’s your Autumn smart read. —Tom Keene, Bloomberg’s Editor-At-Large, Bloomberg Surveillance, September 9, 2014.
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