About About the Author My name is Mariusz Skonieczny and I am the founder and president of Classic Value Investors, LLC, an investment management firm that builds and manages customized investment portfolios for its clients. I am the author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market and The Basics of Understanding Financial Statements. I first became interested in investing while taking a valuation class at Indiana University. After graduating in 2003 with a finance degree, I started managing my own money. At first, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I made my share of mistakes. Then I read The Intelligent Investor and other value investing books, and it just clicked. My investing career did not begin in a traditional way because after graduating from college, I entered the real estate industry where I worked as a commercial real estate analyst. While evaluating properties, I had to dig up information that was not widely available because there are no analysts covering private properties. In stock market investing, it always amazed me that investors did not do this kind of due diligence but simply relied on others to do it for them. I knew that if I did this type of research when investing in public companies, I could get an edge. This works wonderfully with small-cap companies where information is not widely available and coverage by analysts is limited or nonexistent. When the financial crisis forced the stock market to decline significantly, I saw it as a great opportunity to leave the real estate industry and launch a money management company. As a result, I started Classic Value Investors in January 2009. About the Blog The purpose of this blog is to provide investment education, share investment ideas, answer readers’ questions, and interview interesting guests.