The Evolution of Behavioral Value Investor
Free stays free. Here's what I built for serious investors who want to get better.
Twenty-five years ago, as a young analyst at Fidelity, I wanted desperately to get better at investing. I had read the classics. I was working alongside legends like Joel Tillinghast, Will Danoff and Peter Lynch. But there was no structured way to systematically improve - just trial, error, and the occasional hallway conversation.
That gap has stayed with me. And that’s why I am launching what I wish I had over my 25+ year investing career: a systematic way to improve in a time-efficient way with a community of other investors serious about becoming better.
When I started writing on Substack in 2023, it was just an outlet for my occasional thoughts on investing, behavioral finance, and how the intersection of the two can make you a better investor. I had no master plan. No publishing schedule. No concrete goals.
In this organic way, our community grew to over 5,000 subscribers. Many of you have engaged with me in the comments, or in the Notes, which I appreciate. Hopefully you have learned something from me, and I learned from you.
Some of the articles which I have written spark conversations to this day, including:
1. Warren Buffett’s Investing Evolution: His Path to Unmatched Success
3. The Capital Allocation Guide for CEOs
4. Lessons From Warren Buffett’s See’s Candies Acquisition
5. What Do the Best Investors Do That the Rest Don’t?
6. The Existential Challenges Facing The Value Investor Tribe
Last year I launched a new initiative, which is to teach my Value Investing Seminar, for free, over Substack. So far it has been an enjoyable experience for both me and a cohort of dedicated students who have been willing to put in serious effort into reading investing classics to build their own investing process.
What’s Not Changing
I intend to continue to write regular free articles on the Behavioral Value Investor aimed at the general audience. The weekly Value Investing Seminar series that I launched last year will remain free. None of my old articles will have a paywall on them, so if you are a free subscriber you will have everything you had prior to this evolution.
What’s Next
This experience made me realize that there is an audience of serious investors out there who are eager to take their investing process to the next level. You have read the classics. You have already been investing. Yet you realize that there are so many levels to this and want to deliberately improve.
What’s more, you don’t have an easy path to that improvement that’s realistic given your other time commitment or work situation. Perhaps you are an experienced individual investor who wants to get better. Or an analyst or PM at a larger firm where looking vulnerable isn’t exactly a career-advancing move. In each case you are busy, you want to get better, but there is no easy path to do so.
This reminds me of my own early career experience. There was no systematic way to improve - just trial and error, or the occasional conversation with a senior PM. Officially assigned mentors were there to guide your career, not to help you sharpen your craft.
So, I am launching what I wish I had along my 25-year journey as an investor: a way for you to systematically study and improve.
The Behavioral Value Investor is launching a paid tier here on Substack aimed at serious investors who want to take their investment process to the next level. The free content will continue (and even increase!) while the more advanced investors will have a unique opportunity to learn and improve their skills within a like-minded community.
How It Will Work
I am launching a paid component to the Behavioral Value Investor Substack. It will contain weekly content aimed at helping serious investors improve their process and make better decisions.
The core of the new paid Substack will be the 10-Minute Investment Autopsy series – a weekly case study dissecting real investment decisions. Each autopsy follows a consistent format: the original thesis, what actually happened, and the behavioral or process lessons we can extract. The goal isn’t to judge outcomes or the investors, but to accelerate our own improvement and pattern recognition. I will also occasionally share deeper case-studies on companies, advanced frameworks, and templates that will either save you a substantial amount of time or help you make better investing decisions.
The first 10-Minute Investment Autopsy will go live on Thursday, February 5th. If you subscribe before then, you’ll be ready to dive in the moment it comes out.
I plan to grow and nurture a community of like-minded investing improvers and encourage everyone to contribute to the discussions that will only be available to paid members. I will be an active participant in those discussions on a regular basis. Additionally, I will hold an annual Zoom Q&A for paid members where any investing process-related question is fair game.
Why Me
Why should you want to study with me? Self-promotion isn’t my comfort zone, but 25 years of deliberate study and practice has given me experiences worth sharing:
I was an analyst at Fidelity Investments early in my career, where I had the privilege to be mentored by Joel Tillinghast, the star manager (up until recently) of the Fidelity Low-Priced Stock Fund which has trounced the market.
I also learned from Will Danoff, star manager of the Fidelity Contrafund, and had the privilege to meet and learn from legendary investors such as Peter Lynch and Anthony Bolton.
I was promoted from analyst to PM and successfully managed the Focused Value Fund at my last employer prior to venturing out on my own.
I have been managing my own investment partnership, Silver Ring Value Partners, for the last decade, and have been continuously sharpening my investing blade over those years.
I have successfully taught many students via my Value Investing Seminar at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson over the last 7 years.
Who This Is For
If you are a serious, long-term investor who wants to improve, consider subscribing to the paid tier. You should already know the basics and have some investing experience under your belt.
Whether you are an experienced individual investor, an analyst or a PM, I believe you can improve your craft in a time-efficient manner by studying together with me. No experience is too much, since as Warren Buffett has taught us, there is always room for all of us to improve.
In your situation, even if everything you get from studying with me causes you to avoid just one mistake or make one good decision you would not have otherwise, it will pay for the price of the subscription many times over.
Who This is NOT For
If you want:
Stock recommendations
Portfolio transparency
Live analysis of my current investments
Please do NOT subscribe. You will be disappointed as none of these will be provided.
I have a strongly held view against public stock recommendations. Great ideas are rare and reserved for my partners. But more importantly, investing isn’t one decision - it’s the many subsequent decisions about sizing and holding. Someone who buys on a recommendation may not be equipped for the full journey, and their outcome could differ drastically from mine on the same idea.
This is not a stock recommendation service or a portfolio management service, but rather an educational offering for those who want to make better investing decisions.
(Potentially) Frequently Asked Questions:
1. I am an undergraduate student living on a tight budget. But I have already read a ton of serious investing books and am ready to learn more, what can I do? Send me an email at gary@behavioralvalueinvestor.com with the subject line ‘Student Subscription’ from a .edu email address and I will give you a free subscription.
2. I am an MBA student; can I get a free subscription too? Nope. You are spending a lot of money to increase your earning potential and either have the money or will have the money for the subscription. You can make your own decision as to whether it’s worth it for you or not.
3. I run an investment team/organization/firm and want to buy this for everyone. Will there be a group rate? Yes, and if you don’t see one that fits your team’s size just reach out to me directly and we will work out what makes sense.
4. I am a professor, teach an investing class and want all my students to get this, do you have an educational rate? Yes, please reach out to me directly.
5. How much time will I need to spend to see real improvement in my own investing from this? The content will be action-packed to give you the biggest bang for your time, so even as little as 30 minutes a week, consistently done, will help you grow as an investor.
6. How much higher will my annual returns be because of buying this subscription? As you might have noticed, I am pretty anti-promotional. Anyone who makes sensational promises is likely much more concerned with their own wallet than with helping others. All I can promise you is that I will work hard to help you improve and that I will be working hard on improving myself as an investor alongside you.
7. How can the price be worth it if you aren’t even going to give us any stock tips? If you are a good potential fit for the paid tier, even a small improvement in your investing process that leads to just one good decision you would not have made will be worth many multiples of the price. There are plenty of ‘stock tip’ Substacks, but this isn’t one of them.
8. How will you manage the community aspect? Will anyone be allowed in? Anyone who pays will be allowed in initially, but if they behave in a way that’s disruptive to the goals of the group and to our learning, they will be politely, but firmly, asked to leave. No amount of money is worth allowing a small number of folks to poison the well for the rest of us.
9. Is there a limited number of spots? I don’t want to use behavioral FOMO marketing tricks to drive false urgency. However, if the number of subscribers eventually becomes so high that the community/interaction aspect of it becomes unmanageable, I will consider closing the doors.
A Request
Whether you are interested in the paid tier or not, if you have gotten value from reading the Behavioral Value Investor in the past, can you please do me a favor and help me spread the word? I would really appreciate it if you would do one or more of the following:
Restack this post to help others discover this opportunity to learn
Share this with friends or colleagues who you think would benefit
Post a link to this article on social media
About the author
Gary Mishuris, CFA is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Silver Ring Value Partners, an investment firm that seeks to apply its intrinsic value approach to safely compound capital over the long-term. He also teaches the Value Investing Seminar at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.