Value Investing News

From first to worst--that summarizes Legg Mason Value's (LMVTX) performance over the past decade. The fund has lagged the S&P by 23 percentage points for the 12 months ended July 28, 2008. As a result, investors who bought the fund even a decade ago have now experienced performance over that span that lands near the large-blend category's worst quartile and lags the S&P 500 Index, too.

"Bill Miller, the Legg Mason stock picker, said on Wednesday financial stocks appear to have hit a “capitulation low” in mid-July, but held off endorsing them for investors."

The share price of Smithfield Foods (SFD-$21.27) has rebounded about 26 percent in the last month, as investors anticipate that forward operating margins at the world's largest pork producer and processor will benefit from recent pullbacks in corn and energy prices.

Whitney Tilson and Andy Kilpatrick talk about Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway on CNBC.

John P. Grayken made a fortune buying investments no one else seemed to want during the savings and loan debacle in the early 1990s. Now he is trying to repeat that feat by buying the detritus of today’s mortgage crisis.

In a just released SEC filing, Dow Chemical Director John Hess purchased an additional 30,900 shares on Monday at $32.35 for a total of $999k.

“Is it Time to Tiptoe Back into Financial Stocks?,” Jason Zweig asks in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. He argues that Ben Graham’s answer to the question, were Graham still around to consider the matter, would be “no.”

"The value stocks favored by Tweedy, Browne haven't done very well lately. But if you are a true believer in value, that's all the more reason to be buying those stocks now."

"AutoNation (AN) released results today and the news was far better than one would expect given its current operating environment."

"Capital Southwest Corporation (Nasdaq:CSWC) is a Texas-based company investing in businesses that are both publicly traded and private. Its aim is to produce long-term capital appreciation through venture capital investments in companies it deems to have strong growth potential.

The plunging returns of the funds run by Bill Miller are undermining his long-term legacy, Reuters writes, and contributing to the recent slump in shares of Legg Mason, where he once was the star attraction.

Investors are leaving his funds and one large state pension fund says it is reconsidering its investments with Mr. Miller, according to the Reuters article.

"These are the top five stocks that have reached their 52-week lows last week were Exxon Mobil Corp, The Bank of New York Mellon Corp, News Corp, EBay Inc, and MetLife Inc."

"Suncor is an Oil Sands pioneer. The company traces its history back to 1967, a time when the Oil Sands were called the Athabasca Tar Sands and extracting crude from the land on a massive scale was an uneconomic pipe dream."

"A.H. Belo was spun off from Belo Corp. on February 8, 2008. A.H. Belo owns three major daily newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal and The Press-Enterprise. These are the arguments why A.H. Belo would be a good investment..."

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post about Tim McElvaine is him quoting Chris Davis' grandfather, founder of the Davis Select Funds: "You make most of your money during a bear market; you just don't realize it at the time."