John Neff on Investing

When you feel like bragging about a stock, it's probably time to sell.

Many investors can't bear to part company with a stock on the way up, lest they miss the best gain by not holding on. They persuade themselves that a day after they sell, they will have short-changed themselves by not capturing the penultimate dollar. My attitude is: I'm not that smart.

The debate over top-down versus bottom-up investing has always seemed a little fuzzy to Inc. I just keep an eve on the economy and ask, where is a sector that's overdue for recognition:

I wasn't uncomfortable going into retirement. I had given Windsor my all. I was going out while I still had a lot left, which had been my intention.

This critical concept warrants repetition. The market exercises surprising intelligence in at least one respect: Peak cyclical earnings never command peak p/c ratios. In other words, p/e ratios do not expand as if cyclical stocks were grm~ th stocks. As pricing strengthens, a burst of enthusiasm precedes the upsurge in earnings. Seasoned investors

We never salivated for the last dollar in a major move (i.e., the oil stocks). Instead, we tried to take stocks from undervalued to fairly valued. We left "greater-fool" investing to others.

At least a portion of Windsor's critical edge amounted to nothing more mysterious than remembering lessons of the past and how they tend to repeat themselves. You cannot become a captive of historical parallel, but you must be a student of history.

Measured Participation established four broad investment categories:1. Highly recognized growth.2. Less recognized growth.3. Moderate growth.4. Cyclical growth.Windsor participated in each of these categories, irrespective of industry concentrations. When the best values were available in, say, the moderate growth area, we concentrated our investme

Conventional wisdom suggests that, for investors, more information these days is a blessing and more competition is a curse. I'd say the opposite is true. Coping with so much information runs the risk of distracting attention from the few variables that really matter. Because sound evaluations call for assembling information in a logical and carefu