Where the Money Is

Last week, I reviewed a new book on investing for the Wall Street Journal. I've included the first two paragraphs and a link to the full review below.  

An Eye For Earnings

Adam Seessel was a value investor, enamored of old-economy firms trading at low valuations. Then technology stocks started taking off.

In the late 1990s, as home-computer ownership and internet access expanded, investors developed an “irrational exuberance” about dotcom companies, driving unheard of (and unsustainable) gains in the Nasdaq. While this environment prompted some talented young people to start internet-related businesses or join venture-capital firms, Adam Seessel decided to take a job as an oil-and-gas investment analyst. Mr. Seessel was a value investor, focused on old-economy firms trading at low valuations. When the tech bubble burst, his career took off. He started his own firm in 2003.

In the mid-2010s, Mr. Seessel writes in his book “Where the Money Is: Value Investing in the Digital Age,” his funds experienced a “wretched period of underperformance.” His style of value investing didn’t seem to be working, and he watched with frustration as the value of technology stocks soared. The author decided that he needed to either change his approach or “consign myself and my clients to a future of dismal performance.” Mr. Seessel—a religious-studies major at Dartmouth—describes what came next as a conversion. He bought shares in Google, then Amazon, then Intuit, and so on until his portfolio was full of tech stocks.