FUND VIEW-O'Shaughnessy puts own cash into equities

By Jeffrey Hodgson

TORONTO (Reuters) - With the global financial system mired in crisis and Western economies deep in recession, fund manager James O'Shaughnessy is so bullish on stocks he is pouring his own cash into the market.

The influential investor and author of "What Works on Wall Street" says that while stocks could revisit recent lows, the battering they took in 2008 has left them priced for a multiyear bull market.

To back that view up, the chairman of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management said he has taken proceeds from last year's sale of part of the firm to Royal Bank of Canada (RY.TO), and used that to buy stocks.

"We started to put money into the market in September and have continued to do so this month, and will do so until we're all in. And that should probably be February or March. All equities. This is me personally," he told Reuters.

"I would be nervous if I was doing this and was worried about where it might be in six months or a year. I'm not. I'm a long term investor."

The Stamford, Connecticut-based executive, whose firm managed more than $4.8 billion (3.3 billion pounds) at the end of last year, said there was no assurance that indexes such as the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI, Standard & Poor's 500 .SPX and Toronto's S&P/TSX composite .GSPTSE won't revisit lows see in November.

But he said his firm's quantitative investment approach, which uses computer models to study fundamentals and compare them against the price histories of thousands of stocks, points to better times.

With stock markets fresh off their worst yearly performance since the 1930s, valuations have slumped and the market now offers its best buying opportunity since 1982, O'Shaughnessy said.