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Title: What Are Stocks Really Worth? The SmartValue Formula for Buying Low and Selling High by John B. Malloy, John B. Mallory ISBN: 0-9664208-0-2 Publisher: Analytical Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Let's Examine This Book's Primary Assumption...
Comment: I looked at Mr. Malloy's reply to my review and it is worth the potential reader's while to look carefully at the logical inference he notes in his reply regarding his valuation method because he underscores the heart of the matter. Concerning his reliance on book value and average price/book ratios to arrive at a valuation, he says:
1)While book value may be faulty because of problems with goodwill and other distorting factors....
2)This is no matter because the average price/book ratio assigned to the stock will adjust for that faultiness.
The problem is that sometimes it takes a long while for the market to come to its senses about an issue --Cisco, one of the darlings Malloy uses to illustrate his method, is a poignant example. If one had used Malloy's method in 1998 (the year this book was published), the average price/book "adjustment" for Cisco's surreal book value accumulation would be much less severe than the averaging "adjustment" given when the market came to its senses about Cisco's misleading accounting practices in 2001. Malloy's argument that the market automatically cancels out erroneous book value growth is simply misleading on the basis of experience.
Concerning his comment about Monte Carlo simulation, one can pick up any textbook on the process and compare it to what Malloy offers in his book/spreadsheet --and decide for oneself whether what he's doing is Monte Carlo or not (get his book from the library before purchasing it). There is a large body of literature on this topic, and some of it addresses the technical problems that arise from using tools such as Excel, which is not really even capable of generating truly random numbers, to perform Monte Carlo simulations.
Rating: 5
Summary: Comment on Stephen Schneider Review
Comment: Stephen Schneider objects to my reliance on book value in his review of 'What Are Stocks Really Worth?'. Mr. Schneider misses the point. I use book value only as an index of the firm's size. Book value does not have to be accurate to be useful as an index. It only has to be calculated in a consistent way from one year to the next.
For example, a stock's price is book value per share multiplied by the price/book ratio. Suppose a firm overstates book value by 50 percent. That does not make the stock's price increase 50 percent. Instead, overstating book value causes a compensating error in the price/book ratio because the two factors multiplied together must equal the actual stock price.
In the same way, dividends are book value per share multiplied by the return on equity and then by the dividend payout fraction. Overstating book value 50 percent does not cause a 50 percent increase in dividends. There must be compensating errors in the return and in the payout fraction, because all three factors multiplied together must equal actual dividends.
Mr. Schneider also claims that the 'true Monte Carlo simulation requires hundreds, and preferably thousands, of sampling iterations.' Given the rough estimates of possible forecasting errors in valuing stocks, 'hundreds, and preferably thousands' of iterations is gross overkill. The average from as few as ten iterations gives investors a much more reliable value for a stock than a single estimate.
Rating: 3
Summary: Nice, But Author Doesn't Know His Valuation's Limitations...
Comment: The heart of the valuation technique employed by the author of this book is an enterprise's accumulation of book value. Unfortunately, the reader is offered nothing to decipher genuine and bogus accumulations of book value. Indeed, one of the book's primary examples is Cisco Systems, perhaps one of the last decade's most notorious examples of meaningless, or at any rate misleading, book value accumulation. Given the failure to discuss this point, this is a difficult book to endorse for use by the audience the author appears to target.
There are some other troublesome details about the book, and although the author claims to be accessible by email, he failed to answer any of my questions about the Monte Carlo approach he advocates. The Monte Carlo simulation scheme he suggests, which is included on a separate spreadsheet, is less than half-baked to say the least. True Monte Carlo simulation requires hundreds, and preferably thousands, of sampling iterations. The technique Malloy uses here does enough less that the reader is served an injustice by being taught that what he or she doing is "Monte Carlo simulation".
Summing up, the tools offered to novice stock investors in this book are interesting and really are useful with practice and understanding. The trouble is the reader really is not offered sufficient background or training to have a sound grasp on what any stock is "really worth" despite the book's claim, any more than someone reading a manual on surgical knots is ready to really assess a surgical case.
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Title: Streetsmart Guide to Valuing a Stock by Gary Gray, J. Randall Woolridge, Patrick J. Cusatis ISBN: 0071416668 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 19 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The 5 Keys to Value Investing by J. Dennis Jean-Jacques ISBN: 0071402314 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 14 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Being Right or Making Money by Ned Davis ISBN: 0970265115 Publisher: Ned Davis Research, Inc. Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: The Superstock Investor: Profiting from Wall Street's Best Undervalued Companies by Charles Laloggia, Cherrie A. Mahon ISBN: 0071360832 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Trade Pub. Date: 05 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value by Michelle Leder ISBN: 0471433470 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 25 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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