By many measures, veteran New York money manager Mark Boyar is a patient man. He’s also a dying breed on Wall Street.

These days, most investors are said to be extremely impatient, hoping to reap quick and unrealistic returns on their money — say, 30% or more in a matter of weeks, if not days. Not so Mr. Boyar, a long-term thinker and value player whose time horizon on a stock generally runs three to five years, and often as much as seven years.

Examples of his patience are available in abundance: In 1969, Mr. Boyar, a former auditor at Price Waterhouse, started his own investment firm under the banner Mark Boyar & Co. His timing wasn’t great, and it was a struggle for five years before the onset of a bull market. Thank goodness, though, he had the patience to wait it out and develop a winning strategy — notably, a love affair with unloved stocks — that has enabled him to build a successful $500 million money management business.

“We try to buy businesses at big discounts to what they’re worth, focusing mostly on out-of-favor or forgotten stocks, the ones nobody wants until they start going up,” he explains. “They’re the kind,” he says, “that can throw off 40%, 50%, and 100% returns. No, not over the next 12 seconds, but over years, and the longer you hold them, the better your after-tax performance.”

Once described as “the most patient man on Wall Street,” Mr. Boyar has outperformed the S&P 500 during the past decade with a compounded annual growth of better than 2-to-1 (roughly 11.9%, versus 5.3%). His most recent showings: up more than 25% in 2006, down 4% last year, and off 3.4% so far this year.

Mr. Boyar’s prowess in ferreting out undervalued businesses can be seen in his ability to invest in a number of companies that were later taken over. Last year, for example, he experienced buyouts of three companies whose shares he had bought. One was Hilton Hotels, in which he acquired a stake at $9 a share and was taken over at $40 a share. Another was Dow Jones, which he bought between $30 and $35 a share, and which was acquired at $60 a share. The third was a leveraged buyout of Alltel, which Mr. Boyar bought between $45 and $50 a share and which was taken over at $70 a share.

In 1709, Oswald Dykes wrote a book of English proverbs, including, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” That, in a nutshell, is what Mr. Boyar is all about — notably, his willingness to seriously buck the Wall Street crowd by buying the supposedly poisonous stocks most investors would find about as appealing as the plague.

Right now, for example, 17% to 18% of his firm’s portfolio is centered in the financial sector, currently the Street’s most hated investment, given the outburst of billion-dollar write-downs and the threat of more to come. In fact, of his current six favorite out-of-favor stocks, all of which are down at least 40% from their highs, three are in the financial arena: Merrill Lynch, CIT Financial, and Lehman Brothers. The remaining three are Home Depot, Saks Inc., and Comcast. Of these six, Mr. Boyar views Merrill, Saks, and CIT as potential takeover targets.

Five additional favorites are Ameriprise, H.J. Heinz, Midas Muffler, The Limited, and Microsoft.

Mr. Boyar says he believes his stock picks could easily trade lower, but he’s convinced “much of the downside is gone.”

He sees both good and bad in the current market, which he describes as “very difficult and schizophrenic with no momentum and traction.” On the other hand, he notes that the fear and panic that gripped the market since late last year, and spilled over into 2008, has “created more great buying opportunities than I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

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