저자: JoelGreenblatt · 외국인
요약 보기
그린블랫은 복잡한 분석 대신 '1피트 장애물'처럼 쉬운 기회를 찾으라고 강조한다. 특별상황·저평가 기업, 저침투율 산업의 구조적 성장(CDSL 사례), 일시적 문제로 크게 하락한 우량주(메타 사례)를 예로 든다. 핵심은 큰 예측이 아니라 명확한 저평가와 구조적 성장을 알아보는 능력이다. 근거: CDSL 점유율 50%→72%, 계좌 36백만→285백만; 메타 고점 대비 75% 하락 후 약 9배 상승(영상 주장).
다듬은 글
How did you figure out how to invest this way? How did you determine what was important and where you could and couldn't make money? In my junior year, I happened to read an article about a man named Benjamin Graham. And as soon as I read that article, I said, "Ah, that makes sense to me." And I started reading everything he wrote and started looking at the world through a different lens.
I was really looking for a way to understand how much everything costs and pay a lot less while leaving a large margin of safety. And so these special situations gave me this opportunity. I opened, uh, I opened that book, "You Can Be a Stock Market Genius," one of the worst titles ever given to a book.
It was to be called " Any Fool Can Be a Stock Market Genius." But my editor had The Motley Fool back then, which was very popular. So he said, "Oh, you can't use the word 'fool'." And then my father said, "How about 'You Can Be a Stock Market Genius'?" And then in parentheses: " even if you're not very smart." So I laughed a little, and they only gave me a day to change the name.
So I just agreed to it. And it wasn't the best decision. But I start the book with a story about my relatives who lived in Connecticut part of the year and spent time looking for antiques, going to country auctions and sales, and they were looking for art and antiques that were undervalued. When they found a painting at a village auction or a sale, the question they asked was this: If they saw a painting by an artist, and they saw that work by that artist had just been auctioned—a similar painting, a similar size, a similar genre— and it had recently sold for two or three times what they could have bought it for, they would buy it.
This is a completely different question than asking, "Will this artist be the next Picasso?" This is a much more difficult task. So I open the book by saying that the special situation is a bit like this. You know, you don't have to be smart enough to know who the next Picasso will be. You should look a little outside the conventional wisdom, as this is a somewhat unknown area.
These are companies with smaller market capitalization. Something strange is happening , and regular analysts won't look at it because it's too complicated, or you have to read a 400- page report, or the part that's being spun off into a separate business—that's not what people bought the original stock for.
This is for large companies, not for small businesses that are singled out. So these were discarded things. This was my way of making things easier— finding things that were selling well below their fair value. You know, it wasn't that much. I ended the first chapter of the book You Can Become a Stock Market Genius with a story about a plumber who comes to your house, knocks on the pipe once, and says, "You owe me $200." Well, he fixes the pipes and says : "You'll get 200 dollars." And you say to the plumber, “What’s $200?
You came here and knocked on the pipe once . He replies, “Oh, no, it only costs $5. And $195 is the price I pay for knowing where to knock.” That's how I approach investing in special situations—I just make it easier for myself . So I'd rather be a little less smart and a little lazier, but I'd choose what Warren Buffett would call " one-foot barriers." Why look for ten-foot barriers to jump over when you can find one-foot ones?
I don't need to be too smart to succeed if I look in the right places. You know, Joule, in January of '14 I wrote a memo called " Lucky." And there I told a story about a guy who was trying to become a better poker player. He studied the probability of getting the right cards, the chances that his hand would beat others, and the gestures that indicate whether an opponent was bluffing or not.
And his uncle told him, " You're wasting your time trying to become a better poker player." "Why do n't you just find a simpler game?" And it seems to me that you were also looking for what you considered easy games. Yeah, you know, the last story I told in the book illustrates the same point: I tell the story of how I lost a bet, and the loser had to take the winner to the best restaurant in New York .
At that time it was " Lutèce". Chef André Salter worked there, who at the time was considered perhaps the greatest chef in the world. So, at first I called and they did n't want to reserve a table for me. I said, "I agree to any time, any day." And they replied: " Sorry." I didn't understand that. It turned out that they had a 30-day booking window and all the places were already taken.
So I kept calling. In the end, I managed to get in. We arrived at the restaurant, and I didn't really pay attention to who came to take the order, but I took out the menu, pointed to one of the appetizers, and innocently asked, "Is this delicious?" Andre Salter turns to me and says, "No, that's disgusting." The best chef in the world.
And I ask him if what he just cooked is good. The point was that he was trying to say: everything on the menu is good. This is the best restaurant in the world. I try to shop where almost everything is good and I just have to choose from many great options. Look at these two stocks—what Joel Greenblatt calls “ one-foot-bar investments” and obvious situations that became multi-baggers in 2024 and 2025.
Let's start with CDSL. In 2019, there were approximately 36 million DMAT accounts in India, and CDSL had a market share of about 50%. Fast forward to the end of 2024: the number of Demat accounts has grown to 190 million. CDSL has become a massive multibagger, with its stock rising about 20 times from that level, and today the number of accounts in India has reached 285 million, and CDSL's market share has grown to about 72 %.
So what made CDSL such an obvious opportunity? It was a simple combination of low penetration and huge potential for growth, and COVID-19 greatly accelerated this trend as millions of new investors entered the market, eager to participate in the boom. The lesson here is not that you should have predicted CDSL would grow 20x , but that it was important to recognize: the industry has obvious growth potential when it is growing rapidly.
Even a good company can benefit enormously without having to make extraordinary predictions . And we may be seeing a similar situation today in the mutual fund industry. Assets under management in India's mutual funds are projected to grow at around 16-18% annually until 2030. And this growth could potentially be even faster during strong market cycles.
Remember that asset growth has two engines: net capital inflows and market growth. When investors continue to put money into mutual funds and the market grows, assets can grow much faster. So who benefits from this ? Of course, asset management companies, and this is what I call a two-engine growth story: growing investor participation combined with growing asset values.
When an industry has strong structural growth and leading companies are able to capture it, you don't necessarily need to have a complex thesis. Now let's look at the second example: Meta. At one point, Meta shares fell about 75% from their peak. There were several reasons for the collapse: huge metaverse spending, slowing growth, changes to Apple's privacy policy, rising costs, and a sharp deterioration in investor sentiment.
But look what happened next. Meta has grown approximately 9x in less than 3 years. Why? Because underneath all the problems, there was still a high-quality business , exceptional management, huge user scale, and a dominant position in digital advertising. The market had driven down the share price so much that the opportunity became obvious once you separated the temporary problems from the fundamental quality of the business.
And this is where the concept of a one-foot barrier becomes extremely important. When you find a depressed, high-quality business , don't immediately ask if it can grow 100 times. This is often the wrong question. Instead, ask if this is an opportunity to increase your capital by 2, 5, or maybe even 10 times.
As Joel Greenblatt explained, investing doesn't always require jumping over a 6- foot bar. Sometimes the best opportunities are just one-foot barriers right in front of you. The real skill is knowing where to look, recognizing a low barrier, and having the confidence to jump over it.
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