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The Defensive Value Investor

A complete step-by-step guide to building a high-yield, low-risk share portfolio

By John Kingham

Paperback £25.00 / $39.00
eBook £20.00 / $29.50
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The Defensive Value Investor

A complete step-by-step guide to building a high-yield, low-risk share portfolio

By John Kingham

Jacket text

The Defensive Value Investor presents a simple and comprehensive strategy for building and managing a share portfolio.

Defensive investing focuses on strong, steady companies that produce decent rates of income and capital growth, but with risk often coming from a lofty share price. Value investing on the other hand is focused on buying companies on the cheap, but the danger is that these companies are cheap for a reason. Defensive Value combines the two and involves buying relatively defensive companies at value for money prices.

John Kingham explains how to screen for shares with the best combination of quality, value, income and growth, how to conduct a thorough qualitative analysis, when to buy, when to sell, and how to combine your investments into an easily manageable portfolio to reduce risk and increase returns. He also illustrates the method throughout with the help of real-life examples.

Each step of the process has a simple “rule of thumb” to make it easy to remember what you should do. When these rules are put together they provide a checklist of straightforward, actionable statements for the Defensive Value Investor to follow. You may choose to adopt the full Defensive Value approach, or you may prefer to incorporate some of the techniques into your own share analysis. Either way, this comprehensive book is an essential addition to the library of every investor.

About the author

John Kingham is an experienced private investor, investment blogger and newsletter publisher. His professional background is in computer software for the insurance industry, where he worked for clients ranging from Lloyd's syndicates to some of the world's largest general insurers.

In 2011 John left the computer software industry and began publishing UK Value Investor, a monthly newsletter for defensive value investors.

John currently lives in Kent with his wife and son. His website can be found at: www.ukvalueinvestor.com

Reviews

This is an accessible, well-written and engaging guide, and it is also refreshing to hear a perspective from someone who isn’t a typical City professional. Definitely worth a look for any stock-picking private investor.

Dr Matthew Partridge, MoneyWeek

If you are looking to build up a steady portfolio full of low risk, high quality shares with the potential for steady, long-term growth then this is the book for you.

Richard Gill CFA, Master Investor Magazine

Media coverage

From Master Investor:

Industry-wide suicide bidding leaves many support services companies with barely acceptable levels of profitability… the similarities with Carillion are clear…. G4S’s debt and pension obligations relative to its profits are in the same ballpark as Carillion’s were just before it collapsed. … John Kingham is the managing editor of UK Value Investor, the investment newsletter… Read more »

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From Master Investor:

“John’s approach to high yield, low risk investing is based on the Benjamin Graham tradition of being systematic and fact-based, rather than speculative.”

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From ShareSoc:

A guide to building a high-yield, low-risk share portfolio.

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From Master Investor:

… With a professional background in insurance software analysis, John’s approach to high yield, low risk investing is based on the Benjamin Graham tradition of being systematic and fact-based, rather than speculative.

Read More…

From Master Investor:

Marks & Spencer is one of the most obvious dividend-paying stocks in the UK market. With so much attention from investors a company like this should be priced correctly (or so the theory goes), with shares that have no chance of generating market-beating returns other than by pure luck. That may or may not be… Read more »

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From Fidelity :

If I were to simply repeat the book’s subtitle, “a complete step-by-step guide to building a high-yield, low-risk share portfolio”, my book review would be done. Because, really, that’s what Kingham has done. For those of us unfamiliar with the term ‘defensive value investing,’ it’s a hybrid of defensive investing, meaning “buying the shares of… Read more »

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From Hedge Magazine :

CAPE of Good Hope – when it comes to predicting future stock market returns, John Kingham can’t understand why more people don’t make use of the CAPE ratio. Here’s why…

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From Master Investor:

Just like other disciplines, such as art, music, literature and so on, in- vestment has developed its own genres and sub-genres. Music for example has seen the rock genre develop into heavy metal, punk, grunge, glam rock and more exotic disciplines such as Krautrock and crossover thrash. In art we have seen impressionism spin off… Read more »

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From MoneyWeek:

Many studies have proved that value investing (buying companies at bargain basement prices) produces the best long-term returns (indeed, The Fleet Street Letter’s Charlie Morris wrote all about it in MoneyWeek last week). The efficient market hypothesis suggests that this shouldn’t be the case – as soon as everyone realises that value stocks beat the… Read more »

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Contents

About the Author
Preface
Introduction

Part 1. Quantitative Analysis of Company Accounts
1. Profitable Dividends
2. Consistent Growth
3. High Profitability
4. Conservative Finances
5. Low Valuation
6. Defensiveness and Value Combined

Part 2. Qualitative Analysis of a Company's Business
7. Value Traps
8. Competitive Advantages
9. Making a Final Decision

Part 3. Managing Your Portfolio
10. Diversify Wisely
11. Buy Slowly
12. Hold Steadily
13. Sell Deliberately
14. Improve Continuously

Appendix
Rules of Thumb Checklist



Published: 04/04/2016
Edition: 1st
Pages: 304
Formats: paperback - ISBN 9780857193988
ebook - ISBN 9780857195333
Media enquiries

If you’d like to get in touch with the author for interview or comment, or you’d like a review copy of this book, please contact us at pr@harriman-house.com or call +44 (0)1730 233870.

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