Thomas Howard’s Five Radical Rules For Behavioral Investing

You don’t have to convince a value investor that the market is irrational, or that staying above the fray and make rational, reasoned investments is the key to long-term returns. But that usually means spending the time to understand a business deeply before you invest, identifying its moat, knowing its strengths and weaknesses, and establishing your own valuation before looking at market prices.

Athena Investment Services CEO C. Thomas Howard takes exactly the opposite approach, preferring to nothing almost nothing about the stocks that he owns, earning his Pure Valuation fund 25% annualized returns over the last twelve years. In place of Graham-style fundamental analysis, he sticks to five basic criteria meant to take advantage of behavioral anomalies.