America's Best Investors Love Value Stocks

America's most celebrated financial minds -- in most cases, these gurus are in their 70s and 80s -- have much to say about how the rest of us invest. And now more than ever, their advice and philosophies could command attention as a new administration ushers in a sea change in how business on Wall Street gets done.

Sure, the Dow Jones industrial average is reaching new highs and many market watchers are giddy with delight. But what lies ahead over the next four years? At the very least, uncertainty.

These senior investors have seen it all. Warren Buffett, for example, bought his first stock -- six shares of City Service (later Citgo oil company) at $6 a share -- in 1941. He was 11 then; he's 86 today. And if he's learned anything over the years, it's a bedrock principle shared by investors in his wealth and age bracket: value investing, with its long-term timeline, rules the roost.

[See: Warren Buffett's 10 Biggest Deals.]

When Buffett bought Precision Castparts, an aviation supply company, for $37.2 billion in 2015, it was the biggest deal of his career. You might've thought that he planned on a quick score, given his advanced years. But Buffett said then that Berkshire Hathaway (ticker: BRK.A, BRK.B) would be in it for decades. It called to mind one of his most noted maxims, written in a 1988 letter to his shareholders: "Our ideal holding period is forever."

Another billionaire, Charles Brandes, helped make value investing a worldwide phenomenon. Now in his 70s, Brandes personally learned the art and science from Benjamin Graham -- considered the father of value investing -- just as Buffett did.

"For more than 42 years, I've seen the value style benefit investors who showed patience and independence in thinking, regardless of how markets or economies perform," Brandes tells U.S. News & World Report.

Even among less noted but just as experienced investors, value investing holds significant sway.

"The bulk of what Buffett owns outright, such as Clayton Homes, or has a major stake in, like IBM ( IBM) and Coca-Cola ( KO), all have been or still are part of our America's Finest Companies [grouping] of U.S. companies with at least 10 straight years of higher annual dividends," says Bill Staton, managing director and chief investment officer for Staton Financial Advisors in Charlotte, North Carolina.

"Ten or more consecutive years of higher earnings, dividends or both is the sign of strength in a stock," Staton says. "I know it, and I'm betting these leaders know it, too."

Fast closing in on 70, Staton is no investment newbie himself. An economic historian, he began his career as a securities analyst in 1971. That adds up to 46 years and while obviously he's seen much come and go, there's one thing he doesn't care to gawk at: "Forget watching financial shows and listening to all the talking heads."

But what makes these wizened wise men of wealth worth listening to instead? For starters, their commitment to staying put, even when markets and stocks go sour, demonstrates a fearlessness that also allows them to capitalize on opportunities more fearful investors avoid. Here's another Buffettism to that effect: "When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' in the Buffett household."

[See: The 9 Best Investors of All Time.]

"Investors mature at different ages," says James R.F. Berkeley, managing director of Ellice Consulting in London. "The resilience they build is amortized over their years of investing. In times of high volatility, when fear abounds, they come to the fore because they have learned to take advantage of fear."

Then you have the influencers of the influencers. At 93, billionaire Charlie Munger still plugs away at Berkshire Hathaway. There, he serves as vice chairman. But unofficially, Munger's title is this: One of the Few Guys on the Planet Warren Buffett Turns to for Investment Advice.

"Buffett started as a deep value investor but was influenced by Munger to focus on quality companies at reasonable prices," says Bob Johnson, president and CEO of the American College of Financial Services in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. "He encouraged Buffett to buy See's Candies and that has been a very profitable investment. In fact, Warren and Charlie munch on See's peanut brittle during the Q&A portion Berkshire's annual meeting."

But not all investment pioneers past retirement age fit the value investing mold, at least in conventional terms. At 84, Edward O. Thorp can claim many titles: math professor, hedge fund manager and the inventor of blackjack card counting. (He shared his strategy in the 1966 book "Beat the Dealer.") Compared to his contemporaries, Thorp is a maverick. And to him, the Vegas strip and Wall Street have a quite a few things in common.

"Casino blackjack is an unequalled training ground for investing," Thorp says. "You learn to think probabilistically about payoffs and how much to bet in each situation: a simplified introduction to position sizing in portfolio management."

Meanwhile, senior value investors sometimes get it quite wrong. Buffett, who bought huge swaths of IBM stock in 2011, still hasn't made his money back. To be sure, IBM has risen more than 45 percent over the last year and now trades close to $178 per share. But going back to 2012, it's down more than 6 percent, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index has soared close to 75 percent (from $1316 to $2297).

But it's also arguable that in the value-investing paradigm, five years equals a drop in the bucket. Brandes would be the first to tell you that learning from wealthy senior investors also means staying put for quite the long haul.

He says: "Good investing requires patience and rational decision-making, which is especially important because today's market is heavily influenced by short-term thinking and speculation."

And at 87, John Bogle still blogs away. He founded the Vanguard Group's First Index Investment Trust -- now known as the Vanguard 500 Index Fund ( VFINX) -- in 1976, when Gerald Ford was in the White House. Observers were so dismissive that they referred to Vanguard as "Bogle's Folly," especially after he opened for business with $11.3 million in assets. It was less than a tenth of what he'd hoped for.

Today, Bogle may not be nearly as rich as Buffett or Brandes -- he's worth a mere $80 million or so -- but he started his own investing revolution based on patience. As the father of the index mutual fund, his breakthrough was to create a vehicle that would mimic the performance of an index (that is, a selected group of stocks) over the long run.

And how much does Bogle love the long run? Consider the title of his 1999 classic book "Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor."

[See: 9 Ways to Invest in a Post-Election Market.]

Rewind 50 years, and that sounds an awful lot like the moniker of Graham's value investing bible of 1949, "The Intelligent Investor."

Lou Carlozo, managing editor for the Bank Administration Institute, is a U.S. News & World Report investment contributor who has covered a wide range of topics ranging from analysis of quarterly reports for Apple (APPL), Netflix (NFLX) and Tesla Motors (TSLA) to baffling nature of Wall Street jargon. An award-winning journalist, he served as an editor, syndicated weekly columnist and writing coach at the Chicago Tribune, where he worked for 16 years. He was also managing editor for Aol's personal finance team, a full-time contributor to Reuters Money and a weekly columnist for Money Under 30. His recent piece on Laughter and Sales was selected as one of the 10 Best Blogs of the Decade by Ambition.com. The author of a journalism textbook and an accomplished music producer/studio musician, he resides in Chicago with his wife and two children, just a long fly ball from Wrigley Field.