New here? Here are The Intellectual Investor's best reads

Vitaliy Katsenelson

Feb 7, 2023

Get 2022’s best articles by downloading the Almanac

Every year, I publish an almanac - a collection of my best writing from that year. It’s packaged in a beautiful little PDF and is accompanied by the unique illustrations done by Hazen, Contrarian Edge’s brilliant artist.

The 2022 almanac is now ready and you can download it by subscribing to this substack - you’ll get a link to download it in your welcome email.

Investing - the markets through a value-investing lens

I am a value investor (in a moment of senility, Forbes called me “the new Benjamin Graham” in honor of the founder of value investing). If you’d like to understand what value investing is all about and how it can be applied in the real world, read my Six Commandments of Value Investing. You’ll need to give up your email address again to read it - but don’t worry, you won’t get double the emails in your inbox.

Pre-decline markets

Before the market took a dive earlier this year, I regularly pointed out that it is extremely overvalued and expecting a correction. So if you’d like to understand why the markets declined this year, I recommend you read a few of my pieces describing the pre-decline euphoria that pervaded the stock market:

What’s going on right now?

The articles below discuss the current situation we find ourselves in:

Analysis of specific companies

While I don’t talk about every business we invest in at IMA, I do occasional deep dives into the rationale behind some of our more controversial stock picks. I occasionally write updates as the market’s opinion of these picks changes. Here are the most recent ones below:

The Principles of Investing

For the best overview of how I apply active value investing principles to real-world portfolios, see my email series titled The 6 Commandments of Value Investing (you’ll need to give up your email again to get it - but don’t worry, you won’t get double-emailed). If you want even more detail, check out my book on the topic.

I also occasionally write articles on specific topics within value investing - some of the most important ones are listed below. A few of them may be several years old, but remain important reads today.

Life - small steps in self-improvement

I started out writing only about investing. As I got older – probably influenced by fatherhood – I realized that there is a lot of truth in the words of the immortal Freddie Mercury: “There must be more to life than this.” “This” in my case being investing.

Today I write on a variety of topics. Some articles in this section are reflections or stories, others may help you look at things differently or even make a change in your life.

My recent book, Soul in the Game, started out as a collection of my best “life” essays… but then the writer in me took over, and took on a life of its own.

Some of my all-time favorite articles are below:

A lot of these essays are found - rewritten and expanded - in Soul in the Game. If you end up buying the book, forward your order receipt to bonus@soulinthegame.net and I’ll send you 6 “bonus” chapters - new pieces expanding on the themes found in the book.

Classical Music

I was introduced to classical music by my parents, who did their best to instill a love for it from an early age. Today, I try to do the same with my own three children - and with you, dear reader.

My reflections on classical music range from explorations of specific pieces to the biographies of their composers to lessons we could extract from them.

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You can read my favorite essays at the links below: