This book discussed investing (especially in index funds) and it is a good introduction for readers who want to understand investments.

At the moment I will only give a rating to the book and I hope it is possible for me to write down my reviews on Amazon. Barnes and Noble and Goodreads. I am very grateful to you because your publications are great, especially in the topics that interest me most. Thanks and blessings.

Big Money Thinks Small … is so inclusive that it's hard to know where to start in my description of it. Joel Tillinghast, the author, covers the benefits of value investing from investor psychology to cash flow analysis. Tillinghast starts out by defining what investing isn’t; it is not speculation or is not gambling. The difference is vast as Tillinghast explains.

Tillinghast manages a small cap value fund, Fidelity Low-Priced Stock Fund (FLPSX). for Fidelity Investments. With his value investing philosophy, he has beaten the Russell 2000 benchmark every year since 1989, the fund’s inception year. Over the past 27 years, according to the author, a dollar invested in his fund grew to $32 while a dollar invested in the Russel 2000 grew to $12.

Not willing to accept an author’s boasts as fact, I looked up the fund on Scottrade’s website. A Morningstar analyst released a report on the fund, as of May 31, 2017, in which she says that “The fund has gained 13.6% annualized from Joel Tillinghast's 1989 start through June 2016, one of the most impressive showings in the industry.” While, I’m not advocating investing in his fund by posting this impressive statement, it does point to the soundness of Tillinghast’s investment strategy and made me pay more attention to the lessons contained in this book.

One of the most helpful financial statements for value investing according to this book is the cash flow statement. This statement can be found in the company’s 10K. Publicly traded companies must file a 10K statement with the SEC annually. In addition to the company’s financial statements, a 10K also contains footnotes, management comments, and a listing of a company’s key risk factors.

To illustrate some of the points made regarding investment mistakes and losses avoided, the author described different companies and their related failures. These serve as examples of how a company can look successful outwardly when management justifies the use of non-GAAP accounting and off-balance sheet obligations. In some of these cases, an examination of cash flow would not have disclosed the problems; but, the company’s apparent success would have been unexplainable, a red flag according to Tillinghast. In these cases, the author passed on the investments and advises the reader to do the same. Paraphrasing, ‘there are many other companies on the stock market that are more transparent and will prove to be safer investments in the long run’.

I found one deficiency in the book. While the case for value investing is compelling due to its appealing logic, Tillinghast does not give the reader one of the most important tools needed to perform the discounted cash flow (DCF) evaluation. He is vague on where the discount rate comes from. At one point, he throws a discount rate out of 8% but doesn’t explain how that was derived. More information on how a discount rate is determined it needed for the book to go from good to excellent. As I read, I began to wonder if the discount rate could be determined by dividing the cash flow of other companies in the industry by their selling prices? While such an approach may be valid for valuing a residence, it didn’t seem valid for investments as it assumes that the average buyer in the stock market is value. Another thought is that a discount rate may be determined mathematically. A discount rate could be derived by starting with a safe investment yield like the 10-year treasury yield, then adding a factor for expected appreciation, and another factor for the current dividend yield under the assumption that it will continue, plus the addition of a risk of loss factor; all these factors adding up to build a discount rate? Using this method in my own discounted cash flow analysis of a company gave me a derived rate of 8½% and a DCF evaluation of $95 per share, $8 less than the stock’s current bid price. This analysis provided some assurance that I may be on the right track. But, I have no expertise in this matter and may be off base. I wish that Tillinghast had provided some guidance in this regard.

The book that I was given for review was an early edition. My hope is that Tillinghast addresses discount rate derivation in the final publication.