Martin Whitman

Martin Whitman founded Third Avenue Management and developed a distinctive investment philosophy around "safe and cheap" investing — focusing on companies with extremely strong balance sheets trading at large discounts to net asset value. Unlike traditional Benjamin Graham-style value investing that focuses primarily on earnings, Whitman emphasized the quality and nature of balance sheet assets — real estate, financial securities, and other tangible assets that provided a margin of safety. His approach worked particularly well in distressed situations, bankruptcies, and special situations where traditional earnings-based analysis was insufficient. He wrote extensively about credit analysis and its application to equity investing. Third Avenue's real estate fund became known for this approach before facing its own challenges.