May 27, 2021
THE WASHINGTON POST – William Greenâs new book,
Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the Worldâs Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life, offers an immensely alluring promise: By learning the secrets of great investors, from the famous, like Charlie Munger and Sir John Templeton, to those who deliberately fly below the radar, like Nick Sleep and Laura Geritz, we too can be as successful as they are, in business and in life.
“They can teach us not only how to become rich, but how to improve the way we think and reach decisions,” and show us how “they attempt to build lives imbued with a meaning that transcends money,” Green wrote.
On March 10, 2021, International Value Advisers, or IVA, quietly submitted a shocking document to the SEC. There was no accompanying press release or letter to shareholders just a terse announcement that the firm planned to liquidate its two mutual funds in short order. To prepare, both strategies would immediately start selling all the holdings in their portfolios, so that they’d only own cash and cash-like instruments until the liquidation date which was only a month away. No reason was given.
That wasn’t all. The document stated that after the funds were liquidated, IVA itself would close down.
A day or two later, most of the firm’s personnel, including all but one of its seven analysts, had disappeared from the IVA website. No further information was provided.