1/ “We can have no finer role model. He was a value investor — a member of that eccentric tribe that believes it’s better to underpay than to overpay.”
This thread reveals the story of the greatest value investor you've never heard of.
The story of Floyd Odlum.
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2/ With a decent income from his job as a law clerk, Odlum started trading in the stock market. He initially saw the market as a rich, fertile ground for speculative profits. Far from his cemented legacy as a deep value investor.
3/ Yet like most beginning speculators, Odlum too paid his fair share of market tuition.
After losing all his $40,000 starting capital, Odlum retreated from the markets. One newspaper revealed it, “took [Odlum] a while to pay back that sum”.
There aren’t many investors compounding capital at double digits over the course of decades and those that do are already well known (i.e., that guy from Omaha). However, in a small office above a taco shop, a man did just that.
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Allan Mecham ran a hedge fund called Arlington Value who has demonstrated the advantage in simplicity, long-term thinking, and the power of compounding.
Arlington Value doesn’t have a large team of analysts.
They don’t run advanced machine-learning algorithms or exploit esoteric satellite data and there’s not a single distinguished diploma on their walls.