I hold a small position in this stock and browse through these forums maybe once a quarter to see if there is any information that I may have missed from the filings or whether anyone has shared their correspondence with management. I purchased this stock because I think that it is severely undervalued on a price to tangible book value basis, and that even if the majority of its assets would have to be impaired and written down, the price in which I paid would still only be a fraction of what the impairment value.
By your definition, I would be a value investor because I am purchasing this stock at a discount to a valuation metric. But if you really boil down what I'm trying to do, it's that I think the risk/reward ratio of the investment is skewed such that it warrants a bet - and in the end, isn't this what everyone is trying to achieve?
There are many strategies that work in investing, and value is only one of them. Other strategies like momentum, quality over junk, yield/carry have been proven to work academically (Interviews of Marks and Greenblatt both agreed that Momentum works - although they have said that its not within their circle of competence). You wouldn't have superinvestors like Jim Simons, Paul Tudor Jones, George Soros, etc. if value was the only strategy.
If you have in fact familiar with Greenblatt, you should also know that he has said he opened his most recent Gotham Fund to by adding a long/short overlay on top of the S&P500 to reduce tracking error because, as he says, the best strategy is not only one that makes sense, but one that you can stick with. There are drawbacks to each strategy, value plays tend to require long time horizons, momentum plays historically have larger drawdowns, etc.
I'm curious what literature you have read on technical analysis if you are to dismiss it outright. Just because Seth Klarman said so in Margin of Safety doesn't make it so (although I would have to say it's one of the top 5 books I have read for investing). Technical analysis is grounded with behavioural finance and one of the basics is to use it to identify momentum. I can't personally attest to its efficacy because I'm not an expert in the subject, but even Michael Burry uses technical analysis occasionally to find investment ideas. Momentum and Value are negatively correlated, which makes it a good diversifier for a portfolio. Not only that, momentum in conjunction with value have been backtested to show even greater risk adjusted returns.
To dismiss it outright without careful study of the subject is negligent and your argument is just preaching with authority. I don't claim to have read all the value investing books, only somewhere between 30 and 40, but I have done some reading outside of value, and I have found this exercise rather fruitful. I would encourage you to read about other strategies other than value before you form your opinion. What's important isn't just reading more, but reading differently. Try to look at things objectively through different angles and if you still think it's voodoo hogwash, then that's fine.
RealDutch has produced some good insights in this forum. I may not agree with it all, but you can't say he hasn't done his due diligence on this company.
