Reviews for Green Real Estate Investing

The average rating for Green Real Estate Investing based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-27 00:00:00 Sotiris Georgikos When anybody who succesfully managed a fund for 31 years, through changing fads and market regimes writes a book, it begs to be read by all practioners of his art. I picked this book with much hope, expecting at least some binding context-free conclusions to be had - particularly some original ideas. I found nothing earth shattering, and dare say a little dissappointed - not for reading it, but for delivery that was much less than the potential. John Neff talks about investing in 60s, 70s and 90s in US equities and his own version of low p/e investing,employing a tool that is largely an inversion of PEG ratio (what he calls total return ratio). What I would have liked him to discuss more are i) portfolio weighing process - where as book is predominantly focussed on stock-picking and ii) how he coped with various stakeholders when he underperformed, which he did roughly for a third of the time. Any book that talks about how- I-got-it-right-under-my-circumstances has limited appeal, reflecting on limitations of his own approach would have made this book better - every investment rule underpeforms under some condiions and a portfolio manager ought to be aware of that. There is much more to portfolio management, even if it has value tilt, than mere stock-picking and I wish John spent a lot of time on that. His idea of measured participation is a very good idea; I wish John was more generous in building this further. Too many money managers think portfolio management means stock-picking only and this book unfortunately may reinforce their prejudice and myopia. All in all readable, deserves to be finished quickly without thoughtful pause; not a classic.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-08-14 00:00:00 Donald Donahue John Neff, a former fund manager of Vanguard’s Windsor Fund, fairly convincingly lays out the merits of "low p/e investing" (or perhaps value investing) in his eponymous book. It consists of three parts: 1) early life biography, 2) investment philosophy, and 3) his investment record. The second part of the book is too superficial and the third part too self-congratulatory. However, his record is undoubtedly very strong and he provides us with another convincing example of the merits of Graham-Dodd-Buffett-like investing. Neff managed the Windsor Fund from 1964 to 1995. During this period, Neff brought the fund average annual returns of 13.7%, outperforming S&P 500's annual 10.6% return. He beat the index in 22 of those 31 years. His investment philosophy is based on finding good companies with low price-to-earnings ratios. He said that he never bought a stock that was not on sale. He also believed that careful portfolio concentration was necessary to produce alpha. He often bought stocks that were out of favor in the market, sometimes because of bad news or because they were not in "hot" industries. He would, however, sometimes buy into hot industries by investing in suppliers to these industries. He believed in rigorous analysis, spending his weekends rereading the Wall Street Journal papers of the week. His consistency and intellectual honesty in his investing approach make the book a worthwhile read.