Common Stocks and Common Sense: The Strategies, Analyses, Decisions, and Emotions of a Particularly Successful Value Investor

Really enjoyed this book. It is great to get perspective on how (successful) investors walk through situations, how they work out, etc. and this was no exception. These were all real life case studies that were filled with useful detail to put the reader in the shoes of the author, in the moment. I could have kept reading many many more. I also found the detail about how he organizes his workday to shed valuable light into an area otherwise not covered in related literature. In the second edition, I hope to see some more insight into decisions on concentration / position sizing. Overall, a great read!

This book was a fun read for entertainment purposes. It is light on the strategy and analysis and heavy on the stories. A trading book that is priced in this range typically has more analysis in it. This is more of the stories of some interesting trades that Edgar performed. For example: there are several pages on the history of flight in the Boeing chapter, there are not several pages of balance sheets and income statements.Mr. Wachenheim is a billionaire who went to the best schools and whose families fortunes was in the millions before he even started investing it. That written, I had trouble relating to the author. He is able to give CEOs and CFOs a phone call and arrange a meeting. That is above my current capabilities. There are also several "humble brags" that I found hilarious. Notice how the title refers to a particularly successful value investor? That type of language is throughout the book. I don't think he is a bad person, quite the opposite. He comes across as a good person who is a bit out of touch with everyday Americans. If I had that kind of wealth and opportunity, I may have written that way as well.For what I wanted, the last chapter was the most valuable. Edgar lists some of the helpful teachings that he has learned through experience. These were excellent and helpful.

Nice book which summarises a new style of value investing- for the shorter term of 3-4 years rather than the Buffett holding period of forever. Like reading these easy read books in one sitting, and feel it does help my decision making. Has a bunch of case studies showing what he did and why. Focusses on the good decisions, and would have liked to see more errors and how he extracted himself from those situations. Nice easy read.

Excellent. Ed wrote down his logic for each of the highlighted investments. While the analysis was not very detailed, it was still quite a unique approach to an investment book. It feels like he is talking to you and speaking out his mind.This is probably the best approach to managing huge amounts of capital, investing in large caps

I really enjoyed this book.I like how the author provides an inside glimpse of how he finds ideas to invest in and how he analyzes the companies with creative thinking and common sense. In each of the stocks he he writes about (divided up into chapters) he walks you through his analysis and how he determined whether it was a good company to invest in or not. It was particularly helpful for me to see how he created different models for each stock to determine intrinsic value. Very practical book. I will be reading this one again.

I like the explanations of how the writer/investor goes thru the process of finding and evaluating companies to possibly invest in for his company. Great information for a value investor like myself. It gives me more of an insight on what and where to look for companies that we may invest in.

This was a very simple, lucid, specific look at aspects of value investing in action. Mr. Wachenheim lays out 11 specific investments he made over the course of his career in a way that a lay reader can understand, with each investment as its own separate book chapter (IBM, Interstate Bakeries, US Home Corp, Centex corp, Union Pacific Railroad, AIG, Lowe's, Whirlpool, Boeing, Southwest Airlines, and Goldman Sachs). His focus is outlining his own thought process, research, and decisions with an occasional nod to familiar value investing quips. This is not a pedestrian value investment book of well worn concepts left at high level - he gives the reader very specific examples for each investment providing numbers along the way. What I liked most about the book was that each chapter was an invitation to observe how his mind worked; and his analysis was straightforward enough to adopt and use when I put the book down.While some investment books try to inject wit, irony, or humor you'll find little of that here. For better or worse it is a fact-based, almost textbook read. Each investment reads like a case study where he lays out fact patterns, his assumptions (with justifications as to why he believes the assumptions are valid), analysis, and conclusions. It's usually only after he's made a decision to invest towards the last third of each chapter that we see personality emerge as he describes what happened next with each investment and how he reacted; not all chapters of his investments are structured this way, but most are. His description with most of the investments begins with the detailed history of each company with detailed corporate lineage in some cases. Depending on your level of patience (and whether or not the company had an interesting "origin story"), these introductions can occasionally be tedious.Chapter 14 is a letter Mr. Wachenheim wrote to an investment manager in reply to a request for advice. Here, he shifts gears from the history of his own investments to pedagogy to concisely outline his strategy, approach, and 25 points of wisdom. This chapter, and the initial autobiographical chapter credentialing himself, is probably one of his most personal in the book. This letter is a TL;DR version of the book and while very little in that chapter is new to long-time adherents to value investing, it is still very much worth the 10 minute read if you don't feel like reading the whole book.This is a book I am happy to have in my collection.

This book should be added to the core curriculum for any aspiring value investor. The real life examples bring Mr. Wachenheim’s investment philosophy to life.

This book is a gem. Honest, open and practical. After reading hundreds of book on investing, i am not easily impressed, but this one does leave a serious impression. Buffett and Munger level. If the author wanted to inspire, he damn well did. Enjoying every page of it! Thanks for the wonderful book Edgar!

This is required reading for all sophisticated stock investors. The book is part memoir and part investing primer. The advantage of this book is he has presented his learning and insights through many case studies in the recent past. He actually starts from the very beginning and takes us through how he thought about the idea in the beginning, how collected the data, what data he looked at, how he processed that data and how he reached the conclusion that was contrary to the market view. The best part is he also gives the sales and profit protections for each of his case studies. You can see how professional investors arrive at conservative estimates of sales and profits based on various factors. The writer is highly successful and very experienced (30-40 years) hedge fund manager. He is basically long term value investor who seeks great value in his stocks and tries to achieve at least 15 to 20% profits on an average. His actual record is 19% CAGR for last 30+ years. Phenomenal is you consider the market us and downs since 1999 till 2017 when the book was published. That is why I think the case studies and details of his thinking process is invaluable for advanced and intermediate level investors. It is like taking a private investing class from such accomplished hedge fund manager. While you read this book also keep Yahoo finance open and look at the stocks he has discussed. Look at his projections and actual sales and EPS figures over the period he is projecting. Look at how stock price behaved in the same period. That will help you absorb his thought process and put his analysis in the real world context. As he himself says you will see that you do not need to be very accurate in your projections. You just need to get the direction and magnitude of the change right. After reading he book you realize that No one can accurately predict the future. And Good thing is you don't need to.I would rate this as a 5 star book based on how impactful it can be for investor's evolution.

Great read if you want a book that actually takes you step by step into the mind of the investor. For example he talks about in a few years his forecast revenue and the net margin then he divides it by outstanding shares to get estimates eps then applies a P/E ratio( how he gets the P/E ratio I wish he stated ) does he get it from industry average ? If somebody caught it in the book please tell me) this is a simple valuation model that works he has 19% average return for a reason

This is a superb study in stock picking/value investing. The thinking and writing are lucid and accessible to the amateur investor. I highly recommend this book. The cases really help to illustrate the lessons being taught.

The book describes the author's fund's investment strategy of buying undervalued stocks and selling them on reaching target price. It's a sensible strategy to follow and this book, therefore, is a good guide for those investors who are good buyers and do not know when to sell.