What is value investing? Strategy overview and tips to get started

These companies tend to be in undesirable or slow-growing areas, with a low price relative to recent profits and their ratings appear much lower than the market average," says Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.The strategy was developed in the 1920s at Columbia Business School by finance educators Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, who both believed the intrinsic value of a stock should be determined through research of the company's fundamentals, not the anticipated reactions of the market.Among Graham's most well-known students? But this has changed substantially in recent years, as the market and economy have shifted to an increasing focus on growth stocks and the companies issuing them."The main reason value has under-performed lately is that many financial stocks have been languishing ever since the 2008 financial crash, while the big tech stocks have been conquering the world," says Glen Goodman.That said, there are a number of principles an investor should adopt if they want to increase their chances of making a profit when value investing.Strike a balance: Diversification is possibly the most important strategy any investor can take, regardless of their particular focus. With growth investing you really can follow the herd almost, but the whole idea of value investing is that you're spotting something others have missed, so it implies a considerable amount of research and homework.This means poring over a company's financial statements, its balance sheet, its assets, its liabilities, its returns, its growth, and so on.Be patient: As mentioned above, the likes of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger profited from value investing by holding onto value stocks for years, with Buffett holding Coca-Cola for 32 years now.