With so many stocks beaten down and trading far from their highs, surely there's value somewhere in the market, right? That's the premise for a Barron's feature piece on "back to the future" value investing by Mark Hulbert. Some of the most famous investors of all time -- including Warren Buffett -- are acolytes of Benjamin Graham, who famously introduced the concept of value investing to the world 75 years ago in his famous treatise Security Analysis.

According to Barron's, there's value investing and then there's VALUE INVESTING. Many investors who call themselves value investors are tempted to dabble in growth stocks during market upturns. After examining the data, Hulbert argues that a pure adherence to Graham's approach to value investing would have protected and shielded a portfolio from market losses over the past twenty years.

So what are followers of Graham buying now? Well, it turns out that many of them are not yet ready to dip their toes back into the market. One of the most well-known "apostles" of Graham is firmly 80% invested in cash, predicting a "financial firestorm" in the marketplace and dumping all his holdings except a gold mining stock (Newmont Mining) and two defensive consumer stocks (Altria, Philip Morris).

For members of the TradeKing Trader Network: If you're a value investor, what are you buying now?


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[image: The Memoirs of the Dean of Wall Street via Wikipedia]