Tom Jacobs on Maurece Schiller’s Books on Special Situations

About the book:

Special situations make the impossible possible: to obtain almost riskless profits. They were created by Maurece Schiller (1901-1994), an all-but unknown investment advisor toiling alone. This book contains his explanation and examples of this exciting field for value investors, including Schiller’s jewel of a paper, “The Influence of the SEC and Present Market Conditions,” published here for the first time. Warren Buffett wrote the editor: “Never met Schiller, but read some his stuff.” Contains not only Schiller’s 100+ examples, but also 8 detailed modern case studies to illustrate special situations today.

About the author:

Maurece Schiller left Dartmouth and landed on Wall Street in 1922 on the bottom run as a “runner,” delivering orders from the brokerage firm’s customer in the office to the exchange floor, and returning with a confirmation. His experience of seeing shady practices and heedless risk end in the crash and Great Depression led him to choose his life’s work: practice and study of special situations, designed to avoid risk for clients. Beginning in the 1930s, he invented new and refined existing special situations so the investor could experience almost riskless gains and avoid the devastation of the Great Depression again. He rose to the position of Director of Research at Newburger & Loeb in the 1940s. After publishing his first books on special situations in 1955 (the first ever on the subject), 1959 and 1961, he moved from New York to Santa Barbara, where he worked with individual clients of his own registered investment advisory. He published two more books on special situations investing in 1964 and 1966 and contributed articles on the subject through the early 1970s. His works were the only comprehensive treatments of the field until 1997.

About the editor:

Tom Jacobs is a partner at Huckleberry Capital Management, a boutique investment advisory serving clients in 25 states and three non-US countries from offices in Silicon Valley, Asheville, NC, and Marfa, TX.

Tom began learning about money through his weekly allowance. In quarters. And through his savings account passbook, interest hand stamped.

He bought his first shares of stock as a 12-year old learning from his Dad. Apparently not too well or quickly, because his second investment was in his best friend’s father’s new tech company, which turned out to be a fraud. That and his parents’ experience of the Great Depression turned him to a life of teaching, writing, and learning to understand money and risk. Tom’s 20 years of weekly columns offer a unique slant on most money concepts, demystifying them with humor and examples from everyday life. Complacency—what’s popular—is not what he’s about. (He wasn’t popular in high school either.)

After careers as a teacher and lawyer, he became a Senior Analyst at the Motley Fool. Next he formed and managed his own investment research company with Jeff Fischer from 2003 to 2010, and then returned to The Motley Fool as an advisor and portfolio manager from 2010 through 2014. His books include What’s Behind the Numbers? How to Expose Financial Chicanery and Avoid Huge Losses in Your Portfolio, Rule of 72: How to Compound Your Money and Uncover Hidden Stock Profits, and this month, How to Retire on Dividends: Earn a Safe 8%, Leave Your Principal Intact. He edited and republished Maurece Schiller’s five books on special situations investing.

Tom received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his M.A.T. and B.A. from Cornell University. He lives in Marfa, a groovy art destination of 2,000 in Texas’s Big Bend.