finch,Your point about valuing a listed securities is extremely...

finch,

Your point about valuing a listed securities is extremely well-made. Kudos to you for distilling the issue as succinctly as you have.

It never ceases to amaze me (saddens me too, to a degree) how so many people can take their hard-earned savings and buy something whose worth they have no way of discerning, preferring instead to invest on the basis of how the buy-side and/or the sell-side are apparently stacking up at some arbitrary point in time.

And the seemingly manic pre-occupation that so many people have with "manipulators", "bots" and "high frequency algorithms" also never ceases to amaze me.

I must be dumb because I am totally blind to these invisible forces of evil. And even if they do in fact exist they have aboslutely no bearing on me.

For I am one of those very value investors of which you speak. I find I have done more than just fine by having invested over long time periods in high-quality, surplus capital generating, growth businesses such as ARP, AUB, BRG, CCL, DLX, DTL, KOV, IFL, MMS, NHF, RHC, WES, WOW, SDI, SGN, SKE, TLS, and WHG.

It is nice not to have to worry about the bots, the manipulators, the shorters, the trolls under the bridge, or the pixies at the bottom of the garden.

I wonder why more people simply chose not to do likewise.

At the risk of sounding smug, as a value investor the last two years have been some of my best ever in terms of performance, which seems to be at stark odds with what a lot of investors relate on forums such as this.

I guess that's living proof that when something can't be valued - such as a capital consuming resource or exploration stock - then over time the speculation frenzy tends to end in the permanent destruction of capital.

Whereas undervalued growth companies that generate free cash flow, and are able to grow that free cash flow organically, will always go up due to their cash flow-based valuation underpinnings.

My hope is that more people become anchored in funamental value investing, in order to avoid the disappointment and heartache that invariably results from investing on the basis of guesswork and hope.