Thank you Geoff!

As you know, Geoff Gannon writes an incredible blog always presenting thought-provoking commentary and disciplined thinking. His acumen and perception are highly regarded by most of us in the investment section of the blogosphere. As you can see, Geoff is the first link that I have in Value Discipline. He properly describes his blog as being built upon insights of intrinsic value, margin of safety, competitive advantage, and protection of principal. That, dear readers, is the crux of the investing process in my opinion. There are no other building blocks that you need to attain wealth in the capital markets.

Geoff has achieved a unique recognition in the blogosphere. Just mentioning his first name is generally sufficient direction for readers to know who it is you are talking about!

I am deeply honored to be included in Geoff's assessment of "The Eight Best Investing Blogs." As Geoff says, "to make the list a blog had to offer something of value to investors." Value Discipline is in great company when I peruse his other selections.

I was particularly touched by his kind words, "If I was limited to reading only one investing blog, this would be it." Geoff describes our posts as "heavy on facts and reason and light on self-important assertions."

I have always had very high regard for my audience whatever their investment background. Many are fellow analysts and portfolio managers, many are avid students of the market, all have a deep respect for value investing as a discipline. Some are former co-workers who are well aware of my foibles and cigar butt stocks that evanesced into bad memories and vapors. Facts and reasons have always held up better than my ego-driven assertions. The separation of facts from opinion is important to me and I suspect to my readers. I hope to keep things that way.

The headline to this blog reads, "A celebration of value thinking, a salute to common sense and straightforward logic." Probably makes me more pedantic than most, less entertaining than most, but hopefully less BS than most too. I apologize for those times when I had nothing posted. I was either busy at work or I had nothing to say and did not want to waste your time or mine. Voltaire put it best, "One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say!"

Like Geoff Gannon, Value Discipline did not make the cut at 24/7 Wall St's 25 Best Financial Blogs. Frequency of posting may have done us in. Congratulations to those that made the cut. I am a loyal reader of most of these as well and they truly represent the creme de la creme.

Thank you to my readers who endure the quirks that I bring to this blog. Your loyalty is appreciated. Congratulations to those who made the cut in Gannon on Investing! And a hearty thank you to Geoff for the recognition! I will try to live up to your kind comments!