📖Joel Greenblatt

Wisdom for Investing and Life

🌱 Beginner★★★★☆

Investment principles apply to life too.

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The principles that make you a great investor — patience, discipline, humility, and continuous learning — are the same principles that lead to a great life.

— The Little Book That Beats the Market,2005

🏠 Everyday Analogy

A process is like a pilot checklist: discipline prevents simple mistakes when pressure rises and keeps outcomes more repeatable.

📖 Core Interpretation

Joel Greenblatt advocates a repeatable process: define criteria, execute consistently, and review decisions against evidence. Process quality drives outcome consistency.
💎 Key Insight:Character virtues drive success in investing and life.

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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
Spin-off: Liberty Media from AT&T (2000)
AT&T spun off Liberty Media, which appeared complex and overlooked. Greenblatt analyzed underlying assets and saw a large discount to intrinsic value.
✨ Outcome:Held through volatility; as the market recognized underlying media asset value, returns were multiples of initial investment over several years.
2
American Express Post-Asia/Russian Crises (2001)
American Express traded at depressed multiples after emerging market and Russian crises hurt travel and card volumes.
✨ Outcome:Greenblatt’s long-term view on brand strength and card economics led to holding; as conditions normalized, valuation rerated and produced strong multi-year gains.

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