Maurece Schiller, 1955 to 1966
The special situations books
Five forgotten books from the fifties, and the ancestor of every strange structure I get excited about.
Five originals, long out of print. The authorized reprints edited by Tobias Carlisle and Tom Jacobs, 2016 to 2019, are the findable way in.
Lorenzo Ayres / 1 min
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Schiller wrote five books between 1955 and 1966 about what he called special situations, meaning anything where the return comes from a corporate event rather than from the business getting better. Liquidations, tender offers, spinoffs, rights offerings, recapitalizations, odd-lot arbitrage. Then he was forgotten for about fifty years until Tobias Carlisle and Tom Jacobs put the reprints out.
Most of the specific trades in here are dead and I want to be honest about that, because people get excited and then discover half the structures were killed by rule changes or just got too fast. What survives is a habit of mind. Schiller looks at a corporate event and immediately asks who is forced to sell, who is forced to buy, and what that forcing does to the price. It is the same question I ask about a seller with a balloon payment coming, or a family that has held land for forty years and just had a death in it. Somebody is on a clock and the clock has nothing to do with the asset.
Start with the third one, Fortunes in Special Situations in the Stock Market. If that does not do anything for you the other four will not either.
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Find the deal
- Seth Klarman, 1991Margin of SafetyRisk first, reward second, and the book that made those one idea instead of a trade-off.
- Mohnish Pabrai, 2004Mosaic: Perspectives on InvestingPabrai's first book, written before anybody was listening, and better for it.
- Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, 2008globalization: n. the irrational fear that someone in China will take your jobThe Greenwald almost nobody reads. Watch him take a fear everybody repeats and walk it back until it falls apart.
Deals and structure
- Competition DemystifiedBruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, 2005
- Distress InvestingMartin Whitman and Fernando Diz, 2009
- Merger MastersKate Welling and Mario Gabelli, 2018
- World Commodities and World CurrencyBenjamin Graham, 1944
- Storage and StabilityBenjamin Graham, 1937
- Walker's Manual of Unlisted StocksHarry Eisenberg, editor, the 2000 edition
- The Takeover GameJohn Brooks, 1987
- Bankruptcy Investing: How to Profit from Distressed CompaniesBen Branch and Hugh Ray
- The Crash and Its Aftermath: Securities Markets 1929 to 1933Barrie Wigmore, 1985
- Selling America ShortRichard C. Sauer, 2010
- Outsmarting the Smart MoneyLawrence A. Cunningham, 2002
- The Inefficient Stock Market and The New FinanceRobert A. Haugen
- King IcahnMark Stevens, 1993
- Dear ChairmanJeff Gramm, 2016
- Barbarians at the GateBryan Burrough and John Helyar, 1989
- Buy Then BuildWalker Deibel, 2018
- The Art of M&AAlexandra Reed Lajoux and Stanley Foster Reed, 1989
- Breakthrough AdvertisingEugene Schwartz, 1966
- Scientific AdvertisingClaude Hopkins, 1923
- The Boron LettersGary Halbert, 1984
- Way of the WolfJordan Belfort, 2017
- Ogilvy on AdvertisingDavid Ogilvy, 1983
- The Strategy and Tactics of PricingThomas Nagle and Georg Müller, 1987
- Setting the TableDanny Meyer, 2006
- 100 BaggersChristopher Mayer, 2015
- Distant ForceGeorge A. Roberts, 2007
- Rising To Power: Paul Desmarais and Power CorporationDave Greber, 1987
- The Joy of Achievement: Conversations with J.R.D. TataR.M. Lala
- Pleased But Not SatisfiedDavid L. Sokol
- The Story of Bank of America: Biography of a BankMarquis James and Bessie Rowland James, 1954
- Citibank: A Century in AsiaPeter Starr, 2002
- See's Famous Old Time Candies: A Sweet StoryMargaret Moos Pick, 2005
- The Farmer From MernaKarl Schriftgiesser, 1955
- Shaw Industries: A HistoryRandall L. Patton, 2002
- Secrets of Professional Turf BettingRobert L. Bacon, 1956
- Iron Will: Cleveland-Cliffs and the Mining of Iron OreTerry S. Reynolds and Virginia P. Dawson, 2011
- You Bet: The Betfair StoryColin Cameron, 2009
- The Little Book That Beats the MarketJoel Greenblatt, 2005