Maybe that was the wrong terminology.

I simply meant that the first book was written from the perspective of Greenblatt, who was
actually taking positions in the stocks at the time.

Even if Greenblatt doesn't update his work from the same perspective, it could be useful
to have a backward looking analysis of the more recent special situations. OK, we weren't
smart enough to get into these situations at the time, but looking back on it here's what
we could have seen at the time, and here's how we can apply those lessons in the future.

For a guy like Greenblatt, statistical measures don't mean much. In his head, these are
no/low risk stocks with high rewards. Thus, "correlation" and stuff like that means
nothing. Indeed, if one sector was really out of favor, and you had 4 stocks from that
sector that were worth 2 times more than the market is valuing them at now, would you only
pick one because you were afraid of correlation? For people that are really good at
finding value (Greenblatt, Buffett, Lampart), I don't think they care much...

Forensic accounting? Maybe I'm missing something here: why would accounting used in legal
proceedings (i.e., court cases) be useful in ferreting out investment opportunities?

Here's what I'd like to see:

Greenblatt's book was published around '98. I'd like to see an update of several of the
special situations that have occurred since then.

This might be good for another book. But, at a minimum, it'd make a great series of
articles.

Using "forensic accounting", what could one have looked for to identify these
opportunities? How did they play out? On a risk/reward basis, when was the best time to
get in?

This portfolio has been rated here 76 times and has an average rating of 3.76.

Unbelievable!

The average correlation of returns over the last nearly 5 years is over +36%; that's way
too high. In short, any mix of these 4 stocks is far riskier than it needs to be for the
returns it generates.

His hedge fund is geared more towards special situations rather than his formula.