hree professors publish a paper on a market anomaly: Over long periods, value stocks outperform growth stocks. What the hell. Let's try it. That was 20 years ago, LSV Asset Management. It now has $96 billion to play with.
The Chicago firm offers 25 strategies, covering different slices of large, medium, and small companies in North America, European, Asian and emerging markets. All the portfolios use the same recipe: Find uninteresting, slow-growing companies.
Josef Lakonishok, professor turned money manager, built a $96 billion investing business at LSV Asset Management in Chicago. He says he doesn't miss it.
Josef Lakonishok, the ringmaster of the 'L' and the 'S' in the name, explains this approach with little reserve. He doesn't like Nvidia, the outfit with a winning streak in chips for artificial intelligence, but he is in love with La-Z-Boy, which he describes as an "boring business" at all. LSV controls 4.1% of the lounge chair maker.
"I was always a contrarian," Lakonishok says. "I never liked to be like everybody else."
Value investing is scarcely a new thing. Indeed, the term contrarian has become a cliché since money manager David Dreman popularized it in a 1977