About the Owner

fig_eating_bat_mikecastleI, Geoffrey Rocca, am an investor and California licensed attorney specializing in consumer protection and bankruptcy law. My primary mode of investing is value investing, specifically to identify firms with high and sustainable cash flows and that are selling for less than their intrinsic value. As an investor I have been largely self-educated, drawing upon classic texts and modern resources on the subject of appraisal and the art of value investing. Also, my familiarity with bankruptcy law has led me into investigating distressed debt situations as a further potential source of underpriced securities.

In terms of appraisal techniques, I believe that simpler is better: strip out unusual or nonrecurring results to find a company’s baseline earnings, compute an appropriate value based on the results, and assure myself that the subject investment is significantly below that value, thus obtaining a margin of safety. Without this margin, I cannot be sure that I am acquiring the low-hanging fruit. I am willing to make qualitative adjustments based on my sense of earnings stability and firm quality, but I have deep misgiving about the fancier aspects of financial modeling using quantitative analysis. The more deterministic forms of quantitative analysis appear to me to be based on unrealistic assumptions about the behavior of asset prices, and seem to be exposed to a temporary or permanent change in the relationships assumed by the model.

I can be contacted at geoffrey.rocca@gmail.com

fruit-bat I recommend the following books.

Security Analysis, Ben Graham

Margin of Safety, Seth Klarman

Damodaran on Valuation, Aswath Damodaran

The Dark Side of Valuation, Aswath Damodaran

Distressed Debt Investing, Stephen Moyer

The Big Short, Michael Lewis

Value Investing, James Montier