Book Review: You Say Tomayto …

“You Say Tomayto …” (Contrarian Investing in Bitesize Pieces) is written is a similar style to Anthony Bolton’s “Against the Tide”, a series of short summaries on various matters which a fund manager considers relevant to the business of making stock selections for an actively managed fund. In this case the author is Alistair Mundy who heads Investec Asset Management’s Contrarian Equity Team who has reproduced a series of his monthly commentaries from the last four years.

While there were only a relatively small number of points which I had not previously encountered or concluded on my own, on the whole there was enough material to make reading a worthwhile exercise. Especially now when equity markets have been relatively kind, it is worth remembering that good times are generally followed by bad and departing from the principles of being a value investor can be damaging to your wealth.

I particularly liked the sections dealing with breaking down market commentary (mostly useless), sales pitches (ditto) and the momentum investing (a bad idea).