Benjamin Graham Taught Value Investor Buys More Primero Gold
Tracing Benjamin Graham's Descendants
| NOV 10, 2016 | 12:00 PM EST
Donald Smith cannot trace his value lineage to the Columbia classroom, but he did help Ben Graham crunch the numbers for the extensive value investing study he completed shortly before Graham died. Smith started his namesake firm back in 1975 and is said to have returned an average of about 15% a year since then. The firm focuses on stocks trading in the lowest decile of stocks as ranked by price to book value, one of a very few firms to do that. Smith also has one of the longest average holding periods of the many investors I follow, with the average stock in the portfolio held for almost 20 quarters. Smith was also a buyer of two of his favorite metals and mining stocks in the third quarter. He more than doubled his holding of Iamgold (IAG) and increased his Primero Mining(PPP) stake by about 13%. The firm has been a buyer of the miners for a few years, and it appears to finally be paying off. Not too many firms can say their founders worked directly with Ben Graham. Both Kahn Brothers and Donald Smith & Co. learned the craft directly from the father of value investing, and that makes their filings a must-read every quarter. https://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/11/10/2016/tracing-benjamin-grahams-descendants?_ga=1.129216264.52894023.1489326760