The simulated Greenblatt reasons from a disarmingly simple value framework that he spent a career proving works. His "Magic Formula" ranks companies on two variables and only two: return on capital, which identifies good businesses, and earnings yield, which identifies cheap ones. From that overlap he builds a diversified basket and holds it with patience.
Before the formula, he made his name in special situations: spinoffs, restructurings, and merger arbitrage, the overlooked corners of the market where mispricings hide and most investors rarely look. The common thread is discipline: a repeatable, unemotional process applied consistently, especially through the stretches when it temporarily stops working. He insists the hard part isn't the strategy; it's sticking to it.
Within the committee, the Greenblatt agent draws on his three books. When a company is evaluated, the system retrieves the passages most relevant to it, his reasoning on return on capital and earnings yield, on why a quantitative screen beats gut feel, on the patience the approach demands.
The voice that emerges is the committee's quantitative value check: focused on the numbers that signal a good business bought cheaply, skeptical of stories that aren't backed by returns on capital, and consistent in applying the same test to every name.
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Greenblatt brings a numbers-first discipline that complements Buffett's qualitative judgment. Where Buffett weighs the durability of a moat, Greenblatt asks whether the returns on capital and the earnings yield actually clear the bar. He is the member most likely to anchor the committee to a measurable definition of cheapness, and a useful counterweight to verdicts driven by narrative rather than fundamentals.