STRATEGIES / VALUE
LENS 01 · VALUE · 4 STRATEGIES
Cheapness with a margin of safety
Four ways of asking the same question — is this business worth clearly more than it trades for? — from statistical net-nets to durable-moat franchises.
Deep Value (Net-Net)
IN THE TRADITION OF BENJAMIN GRAHAM'S SECURITY ANALYSIS AND THE DIVERSIFIED PRACTICE OF WALTER SCHLOSS
Statistical bargains: companies trading below a conservative estimate of net current asset value. The tradition documents a diversified, multi-year workout horizon — single positions are expected to be ugly.
Discount to net current asset value, cash-burn ceiling, a going-concern operating business — not a shell.
Whether the assets are real and realizable, dilution and delisting risk, and reasons the discount is deserved.
Quality-Value Rank
IN THE TRADITION OF JOEL GREENBLATT'S PUBLISHED RANK METHODOLOGY
A combined rank of earnings yield and return on capital — cheap and good, mechanically. Stage 2 is deliberately minimal: verify the inputs, don't re-argue the rank.
The combined rank across the universe: earnings yield plus return on capital, sector exclusions applied.
Data integrity, accounting quality, and earnings recurrence — is the rank built on numbers that hold up?
Moat Value: Pricing Power
IN THE TRADITION OF GRAHAM'S MARGIN OF SAFETY AND THE QUALITY-FRANCHISE APPROACH ASSOCIATED WITH BUFFETT AND MUNGER
Durable-moat value focused on one moat type: the ability to raise prices ahead of inflation without losing volume. Inversion-driven — it searches for reasons not to own first.
Sustained return on capital, gross-margin stability through cost cycles, balance-sheet strength.
Evidence of price realization in MD&A, switching costs and brand in the business description, owner-earnings quality.
Moat Value: Scale Economics
IN THE TRADITION OF GRAHAM'S MARGIN OF SAFETY AND THE QUALITY-FRANCHISE APPROACH ASSOCIATED WITH BUFFETT AND MUNGER
The mirror image of Pricing Power: businesses that win by being the lowest-cost producer and share scale gains with customers to deepen the advantage.
Unit-cost advantage signatures: sustained return on capital with a different margin shape than pricing-power moats.
Whether scale gains are shared with customers or harvested, reinvestment discipline, and threats to the cost position.
Every strategy on this page can be forked and modified in the Strategy Lab. Strategy titles describe the method; practitioner names appear only as attribution — no methodology here is endorsed by or affiliated with the practitioners named.
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