Dead Companies Walking: How A Hedge Fund Manager Finds Opportunity in Unexpected Places

He is a contributor to Yahoo! Finance, CNBC, and Seeking Alpha and blogs at scottfearon. Scott Fearon worked as a stock analyst and mutual fund manager before launching his own hedge fund, Crown Capital Management, in 1991. Since its inception, the fund has averaged an 11.4 percent annual return-significantly higher than the benchmark S&P 500 index over the same time p

“If you want to read a sharp, insightful, bitingly funny, crystal-clear, quick-read book that could help you avoid making fatal mistakes with your business, pick up Dead Companies Walking.” CFO Magazine“An excellent investing book” Barbarian Capital“Sharp insights into human fallibility as a potential source of moneymaking opportunity.” Kirkus Reviews“A surprisingly entertaining mix of business guide and memoir. Fearon weaves a fascinating odyssey captaining his hedge fund. Carlo Cannell, managing par

"Definitely worthwhile" according to Christopher Mayer. Republished from the February issue of my newsletter Mayer's Special Situations:“Failure is one business trend that never goes out of style.” — Scott FearonScott Fearon is an investor who built the foundation of his success on the bedrock of failure. “Things go wrong more often than they go right,” he writes. He calls this insight “the single most important lesson about business a. Loved it MUStudent Before reading this book I had very little knowledge of short selling and failing companies. This book took me inside the business analyst meetings and thought process of a short selling fund manager. I really enjoyed this book because it was easy to read, I first starting reading a few chapters a day and then decided to read the entire 2/3 rest of the book as soon as I could because I loved the insight it was givin. "Book is easy to read but does not have much meat" according to stockbee. Book is easy to read but does not have much meat. There are no details of steps or how, just case studies told as stories. Those case studies are also not detailed , just few anecdotes. Neither is it practical for average investor to visit companies and talk to management.The basic idea in the book is to find companies likely to go bankrupt because of fashion , fraud or business failure. While the concept is well kn

Here, he explores recent examples like JC Penney, Herbalife and Blockbuster Entertainment to help investors better predict the next booms and busts—and come out on top.. In Dead Companies Walking, Fearon describes his methods for spotting these doomed businesses, and how they can be extremely profitable investments. Unlike most investors, who live in fear of failure, Scott Fearon actively seeks it out. In his experience, corporate managers routinely commit six common mistakes that can derail even the most promising companies: they learn from only the recent past; they rely too heavily on a formula for success; they misunderstand their target customers; they fall victim to the magical storytelling of a mania; they fail to adapt to tectonic shifts in their industry; and they are physically or emotionally removed from their companies' operations. Fearon has interviewed thousands of executives across America, many of whom, unknowingly, were headed toward bankruptcy – from the Texas oil barons of the 80s to the tech wunderkinds of the late 90s to the flush real estate developers of the mid-2000s. He has earned millions of dollars for his hedge fund over the last thirty years shorting the stocks of businesses he believed were on their way to bankruptcy