Like many private investors, we started investing in the stock market by trying to « guess » what would be potentially good investments, based on the usual source of information: annual reports, analyst reports on the companies, news. This strategy had mixed success, leading to some good and to some bad investments.

We hence decided to understand the strategy that the really successfull investors follow and came to the conclusion that a strategy working on the long run is the so called « value investing » strategy. The father of this philosophy (Benjamin Graham) opened the way for some of the most famous investors such as Warren Buffet, and the likes.

But what is really value investing ? Are Ben Graham’s method and principles still actual and are they working on the long run ? How do these methods perform on the short run and on the long run ? What diversification is best ? How long should one keep the stocks ? What value factors are the most relevant ?

Driven by this curiousity, we decided to analyse it carefully by developping some software tools that became Amdamax.