📖Joel Greenblatt
Deep Understanding Required
Develop deep expertise, not surface knowledge.
Surface-level knowledge is dangerous in investing. Develop deep expertise in your areas of focus. True understanding means knowing what could go wrong.
🏠 Everyday Analogy
📖 Core Interpretation
Joel Greenblatt advocates a repeatable process: define criteria, execute consistently, and review decisions against evidence. Process quality drives outcome consistency.
💎 Key Insight:True understanding includes knowing what can go wrong.
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❓ Why It Matters
Without process, there is no reliable feedback loop. Structured execution and review improve decision quality over time.
🎯 How to Practice
Run a decision loop of research, thesis, execution, and post-mortem; document assumptions and update playbooks with evidence, not hindsight bias.
⚠️ Common Pitfalls
Having opinions without execution criteria
Reviewing outcomes but not decisions
Abandoning rules during volatility spikes
📚 Case Studies
1
Post-crisis quality bargains (2009)
Used systematic value screen after 2008 crisis to buy high-ROIC industrial and consumer firms trading at single-digit earnings multiples.
✨ Outcome:As panic subsided, multiples re-rated upward and earnings recovered, producing strong double-digit annualized returns over the next five years.
2
General Cinema Spin-off (1985)
General Cinema separated its beverage subsidiary, forming Coca-Cola Bottling Group. The spin-off was underfollowed and sold by index and legacy holders, creating a mispricing.
✨ Outcome:Greenblatt accumulated shares at low valuations; the spin-off appreciated significantly as fundamentals and market recognition improved.
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