Sometimes there is an article in a newspaper that's so great that it's worth doing a post on just so that more people will see it, and no additional commentary is really necessary. Whitney Tilson's tips for value investors in these weekend's Financial Times is such a piece.

For the uninitiated, Whitney Tilson is one of the great value investing minds of our time. He's also a heck of a good guy: He's one of the founders of Teach For America, and I'm an eager reader of anything that he has to say.

For more information about how to implement the investment strategies discussed in his latest column, I recommend the following books:

You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits. If there's an award for the most informative book with a clunky, annoying title, I nominate this Joel Greenblatt masterpiece. It's focused on special situations such as spin-offs and bankruptcy investing, which are both featured in Tilson's list of tips.

Contrarian Investment Strategies: The Next Generation. Whether you like it or not, almost all value investing seems to have a contrarian angle: You're buying stocks that you think the market is pricing inaccurately. David Dreman makes a compelling case for contrarian investing, and shows how you might be able to beat the market.

Must-read tips from a value investing legend originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 20 May 2007 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.