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John Neff

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most recent: 2025-08-24
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“Outside of looking at things like 52 week low list, he also just read a lot. Like all good investors reading opens up just so many opportunities. And similar to someone like John Templeton or Warren Buffett, the news would often signal the market's perception of the market as a whole. Neph gives an example here in 1991 when Windsor was featured in Forbes under a story called Tarnished Glory. Months later, signaling a rebound in the market, another story was written called Stockpicker Returns to Success.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Many of the examples that John gave in the book, that was what he was looking for, you know, 50 to 200% returns over a reasonable period of time. Many of these names were boring, misunderstood, and cheap. He'd made his returns based on increases in earnings and accompanying multiple expansion. Used what he called the test to see whether a stock was worth looking into when it was down big. So, if there was a big name down big that he was aware of, he might use his total return ratio to see if the business was offering an acceptable upside.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, it's vital to understand that the 52-week low list isn't some giant gold mine. Many of the stocks are at the bottom of the basement because they deserve to be down there. Maybe, you know, earnings have gone negative. Maybe they've lost large contract. Maybe their IP is becoming public domain. Or maybe they just can't service their debt. These are all pretty bad situations for a business to be in. But if you look close enough, there may be a handful of companies that don't quite belong there. Those are the ones that you want because those physicists can really turn on a dime once the market understands that things maybe aren't as bleak as what's embedded in the stock price.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Operating and pre tax margins. And he used this to help ensure that a business had resilient earning streams. The next chapter I want to look at is titled The Bargain Basement. And I think it's aptly named as that is where John really played his entire game. The beautiful part about investing in the bargain basement is that it's not hard to find new opportunities. Today, we can look at apps to find stocks trading at 52-week lows. Now, in John's day, he would have to look at things like public stock tables. John writes, In the course of my career, few days have passed when the new low list has not included one or two solid companies worth investigating. The goal is to find earnings growth capable of capturing the market attention once the climate shifts.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Typically looked for businesses in healthy industries that were trading at a discount to Pierce. For instance, he discussed ABC, which he felt was in a growing industry, had better prospects than his competitors, but was actually trading at a discount to the industry in general. So in terms of fundamentals, John looked at a few things. The first thing was that he demanded some sales growth even if a company was improving margins and therefore improving earnings. At some point, margins can't expand anymore and sales are actually vital to growing those earnings. The second one was to look at cash flow. John's definition of cash flow was retained earnings plus depreciation. Many businesses would have experienced depressed cash flows due to the nature of their operations and incurred larger depreciation expenses, which can mask the actual cash flow of a company. And third was return on equity. He liked it because it showed how skilled management was at delivering returns to the owners of a company's equity. And fourth was margins. He mentioned”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was the sum of per share earnings growth and yield divided by the initial PE paid. So he had an example here of a business called Yellow Freight that he compared to the 1999 S&P 500. So Yellowfreight had a total return ratio of 2.6, and the S&P 500 had a total return of just 0.4. So the point here is that yellowfreight was a better investment compared to the index. Generally, NEF sought businesses that had a ratio of two to one compared to the index. So NEF also just absolutely loved cyclicals. He said they made up about a third of Windsor's portfolio. NEF ensured that he would only buy cyclicals when the market was employing a weight and C approach. So this would allow NEF to enter when earnings were depressed, but he had a very good chance of making money when those earnings normalize back to the upside. The last two principles resonate very strongly with me is I prefer businesses that are growing and high quality. So John”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go back to the Windsor Fund here. So, Windsor Fund used an interesting metric to observe the total returns that it received compared to the PE that it paid. So they refer to it as their total return ratio.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The action that a company would need to do. And instead of making, let's say, a poor acquisition, they would just pay a dividend. So, you know, I think that's actually a pretty decent way of looking at why a company might pay a dividend as well.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dividends is how they're sometimes abused in terms of capital allocation. Some businesses appear to be able to invest 100% of their earnings back into their business at high rates of return. So when I see a company like that that pays a pretty hefty dividend, you have to actually challenge management's capital allocation decisions. If they can get 20% returns on capital, then why are they intentionally deploying less capital? I always consider this when analyzing a company that pays a dividend. Now, alternatively, another way of looking at it, kind of the Peter Lynch way, is that companies that pay a dividend can actually be a good thing. So this is how Lynch looked at it. And his reasoning was that, okay, if a company has cash on its balance sheet, what can often happen is that they just want action and they want action for the sake of having action. So in his opinion, one of the functions of having the dividend was to kind of slow down.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Windsor edged the market by 3.15% per year after expenses while John was in charge. And 2% of that outperformance was due to the dividend yield that John had received, meaning the outperformance in capital gains was approximately 1%. While he liked a dividend yield, if a business was growing, earnings in the double digits, he was okay investing in them even if they had zero percent yields. The concept of a dividend yield is interesting to me, and I think it really matters depending on where you are in your wealth cycle. So if you're employed full-time and don't require dividend income, then getting yield just doesn't matter that much from your stock fix. But if you're a personal investor managing your own money for a living, then yield becomes much more important as you require cash to live off of. And if you don't have dividend yielding companies in your portfolio and the market dives, then you're going to be selling stocks at a pretty big discount to fund your lifestyle. One thing I've never really liked about”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Neff makes a great point that Wall Street tends to obsess over trailing 12-month earnings, but doesn't put enough emphasis on where earnings will be 12 to 18 months from now. So a business with slow trailing 12 months earnings growth might be primed for regression to the mean, meaning they may make a massive jump in EPS over the next year. However, since they experienced a slowdown, the market doesn't always factor in these future improvements. As you'll see in some of the examples we'll be going over, John absolutely loved these types of opportunities. The next tenet is yield production. And this is a principle that I think really differentiated John Neff because while many investors enjoy yields, I haven't seen another investor have as much success as John who made yield a very, very high priority.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eight to eleven rather than 40 to 55. He also felt that a business trading for that cheap was less likely to go through painful multiple contractions. Neff also mentioned in his book that he avoided windfall opportunities. Businesses that I own, like Topicus or Lumine, would just not be on his radar. For Neff, windfall opportunities were also the ones that could obliterate your gains. So let's look at some of the growth that NEF really did look for. His bar wasn't very high at 7%. And I think having that low bar worked very well for him, given that he just wanted things to be cheap. Businesses with a history of growing at, you know, 20% or higher rarely trade for single digit PE multiples. It's worth mentioning that Nef Sweet Spot was in the six to 20% growth range.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He certainly looked for a deal, but he also sought businesses that paid a dividend, meaning they were profitable and growing at a moderate rate. NEFs like to use PE ratios as a yardstick. So the cheaper the business meant you got more for less and it's just that simple. NEF also understood that growth plays a role in a PE ratio of a stock. A business with high growth rates demands a higher PE ratio. But from what I took from reading this book, I don't think NEF was necessarily looking for long-term compounders either. Since he looked for businesses trading in the doldrums, many of the companies he bought were largely unloved. And he would buy them at those points because he knew that sentiment would eventually shift and he'd make a profit then. He preferred looking for businesses that could still grow earnings but not necessarily high flyers. The high flyers rarely traded cheap enough for him, and even with 10% growth in earnings per share, you wouldn't need much expansion in PE to generate 50 to 100% returns. Neff mentioned looking for businesses that could expand their PE from something like”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So his investing strategy was predicated on seven primary principles. So the first one here is low price earnings ratios. Second, fundamental growth over 7%. Third is yield protection. Fourth, superior relationship of total return to the price-to-earnings paid. Fifth, no cyclical exposure without a compensating PE multiple. Sixth, solid companies in growing fields. And seventh, strong fundamentals. Now let's go over each of these principles in a little more detail. Very interestingly, John Neff didn't think of himself as a traditional value investor, like Graham and Dodd. He prefers to be known as a low price to earnings investor. Now part of the distinction is likely because Neff doesn't mention anything”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Market. Amid this wreckage came one of my better moments. I was in New York attending a popular annual mutual fun conference, and the very salesman who 12 months earlier were ready to give Windsor up for lost, instead initiated a spontaneous and glowing ovation when I was introduced. Windsor's demise, Mark Twain would have said, has been greatly exaggerated. Not going to move on from some of Nef's early life and then just dig into Neph's investing strategy to a lot of detail here.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looking back, that was probably a good call for the top. When others are saying your results aren't good because they're succumbing to something like contrast misreaction tendency, it's probably a good signal that things are getting frothy. So the contrast misreaction tendency occurs when we compare things rather than using absolutes. Windsor was still beating the S&P 500, but it was losing the funds that were buying a large number of these high-flying tech stocks, which were being overbought by speculators that were just seeking a very quick return. If you are comparing two funds and one is outperforming the other, the question should be why? And often you'll conclude it's because they're taking more risk by buying more expensive stocks with a very, very minimal margin of safety, or none. So by 1970, investors had changed their tune towards NEF. NEF writes, after having been eclipsed by this adrenaline funds for several years running, we persevered in the very testy 19.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Base on their quality, marketability, growth, and economic characteristics. And the strategy really began to work. So in 1965, Windsor had an excellent year of returns crushing the S&P 500 by 17%. However, the late 1960s was a very challenging period for Windsor when compared to some of the other mutual funds. So keep in mind, this was the GO era and the years in which people like Jerry Tsai became infamous for buying very expensive growth stocks. So even though the Windsor Fund was doing well, it wasn't performing as well as someone like Jerry Sai's fund with Fidelity. Now when referencing Windsor Fund, one bank went as far as to say Windsor Fund was just not with it.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grow stocks and basic industry stocks. So grow stocks were established businesses with above-average long-term prospects in earnings and dividends. Basic industry stocks would track the growth of the U.S. economy. These also included special situations. While they had inherent growth potential in some of these areas, they might be closer to market averages. If you bought them at a low price or time to cycle correctly, you could make a great return, however. Another interesting concept that NEF came up with was what he called measured participation. So measured participation meant evaluating each stock based on its relative risk and reward and comparing those opportunities to other opportunities in other sectors rather than becoming overly focused on any one specific industry. Instead of using traditional industry classification, Windsor assessed stocks, particularly growth and basic industry stocks.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Third here was at Windsor was a $75 million fund inside of Wellington, which had $2 billion in AUM. So Nef unfortunately had problems getting the analysts to help him on specific positions that he wanted to learn more about. And as a result, he requested just one full-time analyst to work for him at the Windsor Fund. So in 1964, Neff was promoted to the head of the Windsor Fund. Now interestingly, at this time, mutual funds weren't nearly as competitive as they are now. But NEF was running a mutual fund and he was very competitive, and he definitely cared about performance. So in October of 1964, Windsor Fund was lagging the S&P 500 by about 3%. Now, that was actually pretty good progress compared to when NEF had or first joined the fund. At this time, NEF was beginning to really solidify his investing strategy that would make him into this legend. And much of that strategy was based just purely on simplicity. He started by bucketing investments into two potential areas.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To avoid losers, consider earnings power during weak macroeconomic environments. You simply do not know when that weakness will happen, but you're nearly guaranteed that it will happen at some point in the future. So by 1964, NEF had three investing principles that he wanted to instill into the Winder Fund that he'd learned from his previous experiences at First National Bank. So the first year was to create impact. You know, this is doing things like increasing position sizes in positions that really offered tremendous returns. The second one was to avoid the issue with the investing committee. So John approached each member separately to gain a consensus on some of his newer ideas. And this worked a lot better than approaching the three as a complete group.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He doesn't discuss mistakes of omission in the book. I have views on it that I'm going to share a little later when we start diving into a strategy. Now, one part of the book that I thought was really worth highlighting was this quote. Then as now, I assign great weight to judgment about the durability of earning power under adverse circumstances. This is such a powerful concept and one that I think most investors might just don't emphasize enough”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lesson for John, as you'll see. So while looking at the Windsor Fund specifically, John kind of came up with these three generalizations regarding some of the losers that the fund held. So the first one was that there were just too many errors in fundamental analysis. The second one was that they were overpaying for companies with poor earnings power. Many of the businesses saw significant declines in earnings power after Windsor had purchased them. And third, This was more of a strategic shift, but it was to sell losers and then just move on from them. So regarding point three here, it sounds like Jean didn't make too many mistakes of omission at this time. You know, he was liquidating a lot of the portfolio.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the times had changed before John had joined. The fund had this diverse portfolio of just unfortunately overpriced businesses with minimal competitive advantages. So during the early 1960s, these were the type of businesses that were actually getting really good returns. But these were also the times when, you know, Buffett was no longer seeing bargains in the market. So buying overpriced tech names was kind of par for the course for many funds during that time. Now, once John joined, he began scrutinizing just why Windsor had fared so poorly. So in 1962, the fund had negative 25% returns. So the first order of business was to get rid of businesses that just didn't belong in the fund. So stock prices were a function of just two variables, earnings and earnings multiples. And this was a crucial...”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wellington was another fun, the one that I just mentioned, which was called the Windsor Fund, for which John had been hired specifically to work. Now, picture this. So the Wellington Fund had a long history of success being launched.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mentor Art Boanis. Boanis hadn't been educated by Graham and Dodd like Robins had, but his thought processes were very similar. Art also had a problem with the investing committee. He would find very interesting ideas, but the committee just wouldn't go for it. Instead, they sought well-known names at their customers could hold on to forever, but offered pretty low returns. But at this time, Neff was just doing very, very well in his personal account. So money from his aero equipment investment that his father suggested he had grown to about $3,000. And by the time he arrived at Windsor, the fund that he would spend the rest of his career at, he periodically added cash to his personal account and had accumulated about $100,000. However, he also lost his desire to work for that bank due to their lack of creativity in buying some of the new ideas that he was coming up with. So as a result, John joined the Wellington Equity Fund in 1963.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, as a security analyst there, he focused on several industries chemicals, pharmaceuticals, automotive, automotive parts, rubber, and banking and finance. So industries that he really resonated with included auto and auto parts. He wasn't really crazy about chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Now, keep in mind, this was back in the 1950s. And just like today, we have all sorts of businesses that are mentioning, you know, AI to create buzz and hopefully prop up their share price. So at this time, that buzzword was Tronics. So during this time, Russia had launched its Sputnik into space, creating a frenzy for tech stocks. So any hint of being an electronics goods manufacturer could boost your stock price, which was why companies were using this Tronics buzzword. So the bank that he was at had this investing committee, and it was often at odds with how John wanted to invest. So while at National City Bank, John met his second”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was a disciple of Graham and Dodd named Sidney Robbins. So Dr. Robbins was a professor of two investment courses that he took while at Toledo. And even though those were the only two investing related courses that John ever took, he actually ended up winning the school's outstanding student finance award. Robbins taught John a ton about value investing and just thinking broadly. So at the age of 23, John Hitchhiked to New York with $20 in his pocket to take part in a series of interviews. Neff originally wanted to be a stockbroker, but after being offered a job not as a stockbroker but as a security analyst with Bosch, a Cleveland-based firm, he came around to the idea that he was probably better suited to just actually analyze stocks rather than sell them. He also figured that avoiding the constant hand holding that comes with being a broker would be a welcome feature being an analyst rather than a stockbroker. So we ended up taking that job in Cleveland with another firm called National City Bank.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Terms for him buying the stock were great. It's his father basically told him that he would cover any losses that he incurred from investing in that stock. Now once John joined the Navy, he went to Toledo and just crushed it there. So I mentioned he wasn't a very, very good student, but at Toledo, he rarely got anything below an A. And it was in Toledo that John met his first mentor in the world of investing.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Glamour to make a buck. The second is that dull businesses that make money are great. And because they're boring, they don't attract a competition. And third, bargaining with suppliers was a great way to ensure a business got the best possible terms that could then be passed on to customers. Nept then moved on and joined the Navy for a two-year stint. Before leaving to join, his father introduced him to his first stock. And that was a stock called Aero Equipment.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before we transition to some of his primary principles here. So John loved arguing. His mom told him that he would argue with a signpost. And this is a pretty common trait that I think I've seen in many value investors. Their natural ability to think in a contrarian manner just aligns really well with them being a tried and trued value investor. Additionally, Nef wasn't really a great student and saw himself as a bit of an outsider in school. So John learned a lot about investing kind of indirectly from his father. So his father owned this business called NEF Equipment Co., which sold items such as air compressors, drive lubrication equipment, lifts, and pneumatic tools to other businesses, including automobile dealers, service stations, auto repair shops, and even farmers. Now his father bid on and won a contract with the U.S. defense company that did very, very well during the Korean War. Neff noted a few learnings from his time working with his father. The first one is that you don't need”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Greeve, and today we're going to be discussing one of the most underrated legends of the value investing world. And that's John Neff. So I'll be citing his autobiography here, which is called John Neff on Investing. The book provides a very, very good illustration of his long and successful career and a lot of details on his strategy, which is what I'm going to be focusing on. So John Neff's investing career ran about three decades, and during that time, he outperformed the S&P 500 by 3% annually, which is one of the most impressive investing feats I've ever seen. One thing I really admire about John was his steadfast ability to just maintain his strategy when other strategies were working better for a time. Now, he ran the Windsor Fund from 1964 to 1995, meaning he was around during the GO years where investors who chase momentum were very well rewarded until they weren't. But let's start with John's early life.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For 25. If it was undervalued and had the characteristics of a winner, he was fair game. I have a deep admiration for investors who own a diverse amount of stocks at wide ranges of valuation metrics and can still outperform the market. Neff was someone who excelled at investing and did a great job of sharing his investing strategy, which I'm going to cover with you today. So whether you're in value investor looking at cigar butts or a growth investor looking for hidden growth, you're going to enjoy this episode. Now, let's get right into this week's episode on John Neff.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, we're going to cover a value investing legend who is rarely discussed among the greats, but most definitely belongs there. That's John Neff, a low PE investor who outperformed the S&P 500 by 3% per year for nearly three decades. My favorite part about NEF was the vast array of ways that he won. Yes, he was best known as a low P investor who gobbled up cheap shares in businesses that were unloved by the market. But that wasn't the single investing strategy, I think, that really defined him. Instead of looking exclusively for cheap stocks, he ventured into cyclicals, moderate growers, and my personal favorite, misunderstood growth. While the majority of his contemporaries chased well-known growth stocks, John chose a road less traveled. And like many value investors, he was forced to endure some pretty tough times of underperformance. However, he never abandoned his value investing routes and continued to invest wherever he could find value. It didn't matter if the stock had a PE afford.”
2025-08-24 · We Study Billionaires · TIP747: John Neff: The Value Investor Who Quietly CRUSHED the S&P 500 w/ Kyle Grieve · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT