Book Reviews
The Little Book That Still Beats the Market Summary and Review
★★★★★ 4.5/5 — A short, plain-language case that a simple, mechanical formula — buy good businesses at bargain prices — can beat…
Read Summary →Joel Greenblatt
"Hedge fund manager and Columbia professor who systematized value investing into a simple formula."
Joel Greenblatt is an American investor, hedge fund manager, and academic best known as the founder of Gotham Capital, an investment partnership that reportedly returned over 40% annualized to investors during its first two decades. He is a professor at Columbia Business School, where he has taught value investing, and co-founder of Gotham Asset Management. Greenblatt developed the "Magic Formula" investing strategy at the center of this book — a systematic way of identifying good businesses trading at bargain prices — and originally wrote The Little Book That Beats the Market for his own children, explaining sophisticated value-investing principles through simple, jargon-free analogies.
{"books_reviewed": 1, "years_active": "1985-present", "primary_focus": "Value investing & quantitative strategy"}
Books by Joel Greenblatt
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Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
The Magic Formula
Combining the rank of earnings yield and return on capital to buy a diversified basket of the top-ranked companies.
Earnings Yield
EBIT divided by Enterprise Value — a cheapness measure that accounts for debt and cash, unlike a simple P/E ratio.
Return on Capital
EBIT divided by tangible capital employed — a quality measure showing how efficiently a business turns capital into profit.
Notable Quotes
"Choosing individual stocks without any idea of what you're looking for is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match. You may live, but you're still an idiot."— The Little Book That Still Beats the Market
Book Author Joel Greenblatt
The Little Book That Still Beats the Market Summary and Review
★★★★★ 4.5/5 — A short, plain-language case that a simple, mechanical formula — buy good businesses at bargain prices — can beat the market, if you have the discipline to stick with it. Best for: readers who want a jargon-free…