Preface: Invest in Current Wealth and Present Value
Real-time final draft manuscript | Quality Value Investing: How to Pick the Winning Stocks of Enduring Enterprises
Audio voiceover:
Substack’s AI-generated voiceover is now available on By David J. Waldron. To access, open the chapter in the Substack app. Please share your thoughts in the comments or via direct message. I plan to use AI to clone my voice for the book’s official audiobook release.
Learn more about audio voiceovers:
https://davidjwaldronbooks.substack.com/p/audio
Haven’t read the previous chapters? You can find them here on my webpage:
https://davidjwaldronbooks.substack.com/p/quality-value-investing
Preface
Invest in Current Wealth and Present Value
My renewed approach to investing, primarily focusing on a company’s current wealth and the present value of its stock price, has transformed me from an underperforming, nearsighted stock trader to an alpha-achieving, far-sighted company investor.
I appreciate your commitment to reading my fifth book, Quality Value Investing: How to Pick the Winning Stocks of Enduring Enterprises. Thank you for your valuable investment of time.
I’m David J. Waldron, author of the international-selling book Build Wealth with Common Stocks. I am excited to introduce interested readers to Quality Value Investing, the book inspired by my Substack subscription newsletter, which has the same title and its acronym, QVI.
Quality Value Investing uses proprietary analysis to uncover fundamental investment opportunities. Its goal is to inspire readers to build and maintain portfolios of shares in quality companies purchased at value prices.
For some background, in early 2008, during the Great Recession-induced bear market, I transitioned to bottom-up value investing after struggling with top-down growth investing for several years. To alleviate my frustration, I began modeling the guiding principles of legendary investors Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch, Howard Marks, and Charlie Munger. I made alpha-achieving stock picks driven by the collective wisdom of influential investors, which became the foundation of Quality Value Investing.
As a result of my investor reinvention, our concentrated family portfolio, which is predominantly comprised of dividend-paying common shares in high-quality enterprises, has achieved alpha by outperforming the S&P 500 Index based on an equal-weighted average total return per holding during the same periods since its inception. Thus, I have discovered firsthand how quality-driven value investing prevails across market cycles.
Quality Value Investing’s Checklist-Driven Approach
My proprietary checklist-driven stock-picking strategy generates an actionable investment thesis summarizing why I rate a researched company and its stock as a buy, hold, or sell.
For example, the easy-to-read and understandable research reports in the QVI newsletter examine the targeted company’s current wealth, including its value proposition or competitive advantage, the business fundamentals or returns on management, and the enterprise’s downside risks. Next, I determine the stock price’s present value by analyzing shareholder yields or the equity bond rate, valuation multiples, intrinsic value, and the share price’s downside risks.
As such, I gravitate toward facts for a more profitable approach to retail investing, prioritizing real-time quality and value over speculation. The current wealth and present value stock-picking strategy rejects myopic trading schemes, unreliable predictive analysis, and excessive business modeling, typical of the financial services industry’s penchant for generating advisory fees rather than portfolio alpha.
Quality-driven investors bypass controversial, unproven investment vehicles in favor of those seeking quick financial gains, however improbable, despite their limited utility. I discovered that do-it-yourself, everyday stock investors can beat the market or achieve their investment goals over time by adhering to a simple menu of time-tested, winning investment principles, strategies, and practices.
In addition, I learned to stop placing bets on faceless stocks and instead invest in the common shares of exceptional businesses. This foundational concept of investing in equities allows willing participants to take affordable partial stakes in publicly traded companies. That approach remains ideal for retail investors seeking to build a portfolio of winning stocks from enduring enterprises.
Retail-level private investors often build portfolios to finance their life’s essential milestones, such as buying a home, paying college tuition, sponsoring a wedding, underwriting a hobby, starting a business, or enjoying a comfortable retirement.
Quality Value Investing helps readers discover how to keep stock picking simple by focusing on the more tangible current wealth and present value paradigm, rather than speculative future share prices and business growth targets. Together, we’ll practice and master the behavioral arts of rational thought, discipline, and patience to take advantage of the magic of compounding, protected by wide margins of safety, to fund those milestones.
The Mission of Quality Value Investing
Although Quality Value Investing welcomes every interested reader to participate and benefit, the book serves best the following pre-retirement investor profile:
Retail-level private investors who are curious about or favor the quality-driven value investing strategy of buying shares of excellent companies when their stock prices are reasonable and hold these positions for as long as the business and investment theses remain intact. They look to open or maintain personal brokerage or tax-deferred accounts and need inspiration to manage their portfolios independently. Furthermore, they desire an accessible, value-added, timeless book to pursue lower-cost and lesser-risk investing across market cycles.
In the book, I use instructive narratives rather than real-time examples of investment opportunities to create a timeless investment reference, as real-time information inevitably becomes obsolete. Nevertheless, the newsletter version of Quality Value Investing publishes new and updated research reports on winning stocks of enduring enterprises, applying the actionable principles, strategies, and practices discussed throughout these pages.
In the back matter, Appendix I, The Elements of Quality-Driven Value Investing, provides readers with a built-in, objective summary of the book for ongoing reference. Appendix II, Glossary of Investing Terms, gives a concise overview of the data-driven content for easy reference by real-time readers. Appendix III, The Quality Value Investing Newsletter, offers additional information about my website-based subscription service, which inspired the book.
Readers may notice recurring themes throughout these pages. As a former executive in postsecondary education, I can attest that mastering a subject or skill requires thousands of hours of repetitive learning and hands-on practice. Quality-driven value investing is no exception to this rule.
I appreciate your interest in Quality Value Investing: How to Pick the Winning Stocks of Enduring Enterprises.
Please read the important disclosures and disclaimers before beginning or continuing your journey toward financial independence through quality-driven value investing.
Disclosure: As of the writing of the Preface, our family’s concentrated portfolio held long, beneficial positions in the common shares of nine companies from the QVI Real-Time Stock Picks, including those mentioned throughout the book. I wrote this book myself, expressing my opinions. Other than the book’s funding campaign, publishing royalties, and premium newsletter subscriptions, I am not compensated in any other way for it. I have no business relationship with any publicly traded company mentioned in this book or owned in our family portfolio.
Additional Disclosure: The content of David J. Waldron’s Quality Value Investing book and the QVI Real-Time Stock Picks is for informational purposes only. Data accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Narratives and analytics are impersonal and not tailored to individual needs. The narrative is not intended for portfolio construction beyond the QVI Real-Time Stock Picks and his family portfolio, which are presented solely for educational purposes. David is a private investor and author, not an investment adviser. Readers should always engage in independent research or due diligence and consider consulting a fee-only certified financial planner, a licensed discount broker, a flat-fee registered investment adviser, a certified public accountant, or a specialized attorney before making any investment, income tax, or estate planning decisions.
Disclaimer: Although Quality Value Investing takes a skeptical view of the financial services industry, commonly referred to in the media as Wall Street—a euphemism for professional or institutional investing anywhere in the world—it neither implies nor expresses specific issues with nor negative references to any actual organizations or individuals existing or working in the financial services industry. Any perceived connection to or offense against actual firms or natural persons is coincidental and unintentional. In his general lament of the Wall Street way, the author abstains from unproven conspiracy theories and presents a narrative platform for commentary, critique, education, and parody. In this world, facts are exempt from any alternative paradigm. The subjective thoughts shared by the author throughout the book are his opinions and are, therefore, independent of fact.
The manuscript is copyright 2025 by David J. Waldron. All rights reserved worldwide.
Next in Quality Value Investing | Chapter One: Adopt a Checklist Approach to Investing
Universal links allow you to preview or purchase David’s published print or ebooks—each available globally at your preferred online bookstores—with one or two clicks, brought to you by our trusted partner, BookFunnel.
