ValuFocus Investing: A Cash-Loving Contrarian Way to Invest in Stocks

Rawley Thomas

I acknowledge the extraordinary debt that I owe to both Benoit Mandelbrot and Bart Madden, whose wisdom and graciousness formed the core foundation for this book.

I also thank the “LCRT Brain Trust” for their numerous contributions to the theories, research, and applied product development which underlie this work. In alphabetical order, they include Bob Atra, Amit Dugar, Bill Hass, Lee Hayes, Terry Heiland, Bill Mahoney, Shep Pryor, Randy Schostag, Nancy Thomas (no relation), Mark Ubelhart, and Dandan Yang. Many are mentioned in the text or footnotes for their specific contributions.

I have been honored to facilitate the FMA PDDARI as Supported by the CFA Society of Chicago and the FMA PDDARI Advisory Committee. FMA PDDARI is the Practitioner Demand Driven Academic Initiative of the Financial Management Association. Its purpose is to bridge practitioner needs with both academic and practitioner research. The depth and breadth of those monthly and quarterly discussions contributed greatly to my thinking about this work. Being in the “vortex of the information flow” within the profession provided a unique vantage point across the silos of separate concentrated expertise. In alphabetical order, PDDARI includes Michael Falk, John Finnerty, Mike Lindh, Paul Kaplan, Jack Rader, Mike Riley, and David Walker.

I thank Bill Falloon, Senior Editor at Wiley and Marty Schecter, Director of E-Business Development at Wiley for quickly grasping the vision for this book—what it could ...