The Validea Story

Our Philosophy & Mission

At Validea we believe the best way to outperform the market is to follow the investment factors and strategies that have done so over long periods of time. Since 2003, our team has been dedicated to bringing the fundamental strategies of great investors and academics to the professional and retail investment communities via the tools, portfolios and research found on Validea.

Our Story

Validea founder John Reese, like many investors, had always been actively involved in managing his own money. But after growing frustrated with underperforming fund managers and pundits who offered more hyperbole than help, John began conducting his own extensive research into quantitative investment strategies some 20 years ago. The goal of his research was to find strategies that had consistently outperformed the market over the long term, and which the average investor could use in a practical way. What John found was that a number of history's greatest investors, including Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, and Benjamin Graham, had made their fortunes by using approaches that were mostly, if not completely, quantitative. He also found that there was significant academic research that identified factors and strategies that work over the long-term. After studying these published book and research papers, John used his background in computer science and artificial intelligence to develop the sophisticated yet easy-to-use factor models offered on Validea.

Our ultimate goal for Validea.com is two-fold: to identify and implement the factor-based strategies with the best long-term records, and to offer investors a systematic investment framework that helps them overcome the emotions and biases that often eat away at long-term performance.

Every day, those of us who work at Validea work hard not to lose sight of John's original goal -- to make successful investing easier and more understandable and to give investors access to an investing system that gives them the best chance of generating long term outperformance over the market using the strategies of great investors.

Our Book

  Today's investor is faced with a myriad of investment options and strategies. Whether you are seeking someone to manage your money or are a self-directed investor deciding to tackle the market on your own, the options can be overwhelming. In an easy-to-read and simple format, The Guru Investor, which was written by Validea founders John Reese and Jack Forehand, dissects the strategies of some of Wall Street's most successful investment gurus and teaches readers how to weed through the all of the choices to find a strategy that works for them. The model portfolio system used in the book and also featured on Validea.com turns each strategy into an actionable system, addressing many of the common mistakes that doom individual investors to market underperformance. The Guru Investor focuses on the principles behind Validea's multi-guru approach, showing how investors can combine the proven strategies of these legendary "gurus" into a disciplined investing system that has significantly outperformed the market. Gurus covered in the book are: Benjamin Graham; John Neff; David Dreman; Warren Buffett; Peter Lynch; Ken Fisher; Martin Zweig; James O'Shaughnessy; Joel Greenblatt; and Joseph Piotroski.

Our Team

John P. Reese - Founder

John P. Reese, founder and CEO of Validea, is the author of The Guru Investor: How to Beat the Market Using History's Best Investment Strategies and a regular columnist for Forbes and Canada's Globe & Mail. He is also the co-founder of Validea Capital Management, a money management firm for individuals and institutions. He holds a Master's of Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor's degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jack Forehand, CFA, CFP® - President

Since 2003, Jack has been co-developing Validea's guru-based models and investing system. Jack is a CFA Charterholder and a CFP® Professional and is the co-author of The Guru Investor: How to Beat the Market Using History's Best Investment Strategies. He is also co-founder of Validea Capital Management and co-host of the Excess Returns Podcast.

Justin Carbonneau - Vice President

Justin is VP of Validea, in charge of sales, partnerships and media relations and has been involved with the company since its very beginning. Justin, who holds a MBA from the University of Connecticut, was on UConn's Track & Field team and is a former member of the Connecticut Air National Guard. Justin is also one of the partners at Validea Capital Management and co-host of the Excess Returns Podcast.

Performance Disclaimer: Returns presented on Validea.com are model returns and do not represent actual trading. As a result, they do not incorporate any commissions or other trading costs or fees. Model portfolios with inception dates on or after 12/30/2005 include a combination of back tested and live model returns. The back-tested performance results shown are hypothetical and are not the result of real-time management of actual accounts. The back-testing of performance differs from actual account performance because the investment strategy may be adjusted at any time, for any reason and can continue to be changed until desired or better performance results are achieved. Back-tested returns are presented to provide general information regarding how the underlying strategy behind the portfolio performed in our historical testing. A back-tested strategy has the benefit of hindsight and the results do not reflect the impact that material economic or market factors may have had on advisor's decision-making if actual client assets were being managed using this approach. The model portfolios offered on Validea are concentrated and as a result they will exhibit high levels of volatility and their performance can be substantially impacted by the performance of individual positions.

Optimal portfolios presented on Validea.com represent the rebalancing period that has led to the best historical performance for each of our equity models. Each optimal portfolio was determined after the fact with performance information that was not available at portfolio inception. As a result, an investor could not have invested in the optimal portfolio since its inception. Optimal portfolios are presented to allow investors to quickly determine the portfolio size and rebalancing period that has performed best for each of our models in our historical testing.

Both the model portfolio and benchmark returns presented for all equity portfolios on Validea.com are not inclusive of dividends. Returns for our ETF portfolios and trend following system, and the benchmarks they are compared to, are inclusive of dividends. The S&P 500 is presented as a benchmark because it is the most widely followed benchmark of the overall US market and is most often used by investors for return comparison purposes. As with any investment strategy, there is potential for profit as well as the possibility of loss and investors may incur a loss despite a past history of gains. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Results will vary with economic and market conditions.