Joel Greenblatt

Last updated
Joel Greenblatt
Born (1957-12-13) December 13, 1957 (age 65)
Great Neck, New York
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (BS)
Occupation(s)Managing Principal and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Gotham Asset Management
Former Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School
Website Gotham Asset Management
Columbia Business School Faculty

Joel Greenblatt (born December 13, 1957) is an American academic, hedge fund manager, investor, and writer. He is a value investor, alumnus of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He runs Gotham Asset Management with his partner, Robert Goldstein. He is the former chairman of the board of Alliant Techsystems (1994–1995) [1] and founder of the New York Securities Auction Corporation. He was a director at Pzena Investment Management, a firm specializing in value investing and asset management for high-net worth clients. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Greenblatt was born in Great Neck, New York. Greenblatt is a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.S. summa cum laude in 1979 and M.B.A. in 1980. [1] At Wharton, his paper "How the small investor can beat the market" was published in The Journal of Portfolio Management. [3] Greenblatt spent one year studying law at Stanford Law School in California before dropping out to pursue a career in finance. [4]

Career in finance

From Gotham Capital To Gotham Asset Management

In 1985, Greenblatt started a hedge fund, Gotham Capital, with $7 million, most of which was provided by "junk-bond king" Michael Milken. [5] Robert Goldstein joined Gotham Capital in 1989. [1] At Gotham Capital between 1985 and 1994, Greenblatt presided over an annualized return of 50% "after all expenses" but "before general partner's incentive allocation" fees; or 30%, net of all fees. [6] ) Gotham specialized in "special situations" like spinoffs and other corporate restructurings". [7] [8] In January 1995 Gotham returned all capital of outside partners (approximately $500 million). [8]

From 1995 to 2009 Gotham Capital was closed to outside investors. [8]

In 2000 Gotham Capital helped Michael Burry create his hedge fund Scion Capital by buying 25% of its capital for one million dollars after taxes. [9] In October 2006, Gotham's investment in the funds managed by Scion amounted to $100 million. [9] Gotham exited its investments both in the managed funds by Scion Capital and as a shareholder. [9]

In 2008 Gotham Asset Management, LLC was created as "the successor to the investment advisory business of Gotham Capital". [1] In 2010, Gotham started four conventional mutual funds raising $360 million. [8] As of December 2021 Gotham Asset Management, LLC managed $3.74 billion. [10] [11] [12] [13]

Value Investing Professor

Greenblatt served as an adjunt professor teaching value investing classes for MBA students at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business for over 20 years. [1] [6]

Value Investors Club

Greenblatt co-founded a website with John Petry called the Value Investors Club, [14] where investors approved through an application process exchange value and special situation investment ideas. Membership is capped at 250 members and is considered highly prestigious. [15] A 2012 academic study showed that the recommendations of the members of the club do in fact appear to generate significant abnormal profits. [16] The club awards $5000 bimonthly to members who provide the best advice. [17]

Magic Formula Investing

Greenblatt's book The Little Book That Beats the Market (Wiley, 2005 & 2010) introduced the investment strategy of "magic formula investing", a method for determining which stocks to buy: "cheap and good companies" with a high earnings yield and a high return on invested capital. His strategy is featured in The Guru Investor by John P. Reese. Several studies from around the world have found Greenblat's formula tends to result in long-term outperformance relative to market averages, but is also associated with significantly higher short-term volatility and sharper drawdowns due to his concentrated approach of 20–30 stocks. [18] [19] [20] [21]

In October 2009, Greenblatt launched a website for Formula Investing, providing an online tool that follows the investment strategy described in his book. [22] [23]

Author

Greenblatt’s first book, You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits, was released in 1997. Greenblatt published his second book, The Little Book That Beats the Market in 2005, a New York Times Best-Seller that sold over 300,000 copies. After the 2007–2008 financial crisis, The Little Book was updated and re-released in 2010 as The Little Book that Still Beats the Market. [24]

Greenblatt’s book, The Big Secret for the Small Investor: A New Route to Long-Term Investment Success, was released in 2011. [25]

In 2020, Greenblatt shared an investor’s perspective on building an economy that works for all in his book Common Sense: The Investor’s Guide to Equality, Opportunity, and Growth. [26]

Philanthropy

In 2002, Greenblatt donated $2.5 million to P.S. 65Q, a public elementary school in the borough of Queens, whose students come largely from the neighborhood's South American and South Asian immigrant communities. This investment was equal to about $1,000 per student per year over five years. [27]

In 2006, Greenblatt co-founded the Success Academy Charter Schools, then known as the Harlem Success Academy Charter School, an elementary school in the city's historically African-American neighborhood. [28]

He has also served on the boards of the Institute for Student Achievement and the Davidson School of the Jewish Theological Seminary. [29]

During 2007 and 2008, Joel Greenblatt, Robert Goldstein and Gary Curhan created a website, inspired by the Value Investors Club, to spur idea sharing in order to advance cancer research. [30] [31] The $1 million Gotham Prize for Cancer Research was awarded in 2008 to Alexander Varshavsky for trying to find a potentially vulnerable feature of cancer cells that won't change during tumor progression. [32]

Greenblatt is a founding Master Player of the Portfolios with Purpose virtual stock trading contest. [33]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Finance</span> The academic discipline studying businesses and investments

Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, which is the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services . Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.

A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as short selling, leverage, and derivatives. Financial regulators generally restrict hedge fund marketing to institutional investors, high net worth individuals, and accredited investors.

Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broader viewpoint, an investment can be defined as "to tailor the pattern of expenditure and receipt of resources to optimise the desirable patterns of these flows". When expenditure and receipts are defined in terms of money, then the net monetary receipt in a time period is termed as cash flow, while money received in a series of several time periods is termed as cash flow stream. Investment science is the application of scientific tools for investments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myron Scholes</span> Canadian-American financial economist

Myron Samuel Scholes is a Canadian-American financial economist. Scholes is the Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, and co-originator of the Black–Scholes options pricing model. Scholes is currently the chairman of the Board of Economic Advisers of Stamos Capital Partners. Previously he served as the chairman of Platinum Grove Asset Management and on the Dimensional Fund Advisors board of directors, American Century Mutual Fund board of directors and the Cutwater Advisory Board. He was a principal and limited partner at Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a highly leveraged hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, and a managing director at Salomon Brothers. Other positions Scholes held include the Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, director of the Center for Research in Security Prices, and professor of finance at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Scholes earned his PhD at the University of Chicago.

A mutual fund is an investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV in Europe and open-ended investment company (OEIC) in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Value investing</span> Investment paradigm

Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. The various forms of value investing derive from the investment philosophy first taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School in 1928, and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.

Net asset value (NAV) is the value of an entity's assets minus the value of its liabilities, often in relation to open-end, mutual funds, hedge funds, and venture capital funds. Shares of such funds registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are usually bought and redeemed at their net asset value. It is also a key figure with regard to hedge funds and venture capital funds when calculating the value of the underlying investments in these funds by investors. This may also be the same as the book value or the equity value of a business. Net asset value may represent the value of the total equity, or it may be divided by the number of shares outstanding held by investors, thereby representing the net asset value per share.

Tiger Management Corp., also known as "The Tiger Fund", is an American hedge fund and family office founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and closed in March 2000/01. It continues to operate today in direct public equity investments and seeding new investment funds.

A stock fund, or equity fund, is a fund that invests in stocks, also called equity securities. Stock funds can be contrasted with bond funds and money funds. Fund assets are typically mainly in stock, with some amount of cash, which is generally quite small, as opposed to bonds, notes, or other securities. This may be a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. The objective of an equity fund is long-term growth through capital gains, although historically dividends have also been an important source of total return. Specific equity funds may focus on a certain sector of the market or may be geared toward a certain level of risk.

Magic formula investing is an investment technique outlined by Joel Greenblatt that uses the principles of value investing.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seth Klarman</span> American billionaire investor

Seth Andrew Klarman is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and author. He is a proponent of value investing. He is the chief executive and portfolio manager of the Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership he founded in 1982.

A portfolio manager (PM) is a professional responsible for making investment decisions and carrying out investment activities on behalf of vested individuals or institutions. Clients invest their money into the PM's investment policy for future growth, such as a retirement fund, endowment fund, or education fund. PMs work with a team of analysts and researchers and are responsible for establishing an investment strategy, selecting appropriate investments, and allocating each investment properly towards an investment fund or asset management vehicle.

A quantitative fund is an investment fund that uses quantitative investment management instead of fundamental human analysis.

Michael James Burry is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and physician. He founded the hedge fund Scion Capital, which he ran from 2000 until 2008 before closing it to focus on his personal investments. He is best known for being among the first investors to predict and profit from the subprime mortgage crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010.

Clifford Scott Asness is an American hedge fund manager and the co-founder of AQR Capital Management. According to an April 2020 Forbes profile, Asness' estimated net worth was $2.6 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Investment fund</span> Way of investing money alongside other investors

An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages include an ability to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corporate finance</span> Framework for corporate funding, capital structure, and investments

Corporate finance is the area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of corporations, the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize or increase shareholder value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CI Financial</span> Largest investment management firm by assets under management in Canada

CI Financial is the largest investment management firm by assets under management in Canada. Based in Toronto, Ontario, it offers investment management and wealth management services targeted to high net worth retail investors, as well as brokerage and trading services to portfolio managers and institutional investors. It is considered one of the Big Three investment management companies in Canada, along with Mackenzie Investments and Fiera Capital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-Flyer (company)</span> China-based quantitative hedge fund and AI company

High-Flyer is a Hangzhou-based hedge fund and artificial intelligence (AI) company founded in 2015. It is one of the largest quantitative funds in China.

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