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Value investing

275 articles. Educational only: none of these is a research report or a recommendation.

The Shop That Says No: Why the Best Businesses Turn Away Customers

Every business wants to grow. So a company that is willing to let its sales fall rather than take bad business is doing something rare. Learning…

The Scooter That Sells Twice: What the Second-Hand Price Tells You About a Business

A product that still fetches a good price years after it was sold is quietly telling you something about the company that made it. Learning to…

The Sweet Shop That Took the Box Back: How a Business Behaves When Something Goes Wrong

Every business makes mistakes. The rare ones admit them fast, fix them at their own cost, and come back stronger. Watching a company on its worst…

The Ten-Rupee Part That Stops a Ten-Lakh Machine: How to Judge a Business Nobody Bargains With

Some companies sell something that is a tiny line on their customer’s bill and a disaster if it fails. That combination — small in cost, large…

Who Chooses, Who Uses, Who Pays: The Three People Hiding Inside Every Sale

Most sales look like one person handing over money. Very often they are not. Learning to separate the chooser, the user and the payer is one…

The Shop That Sells Only One Thing: How to Judge a Business That Lives Off a Single Product

Some companies earn almost everything they earn from one product. That is not automatically a weakness, and it is not automatically a strength either. Here is…

The Baker Who Grows His Own Wheat: How to Judge a Business That Owns Its Own Supply

Some companies make the things they sell from scratch. Others simply assemble what arrives at the gate. The difference tells you more about the quality of…

The Sweater Shop in July: How to Judge a Business Whose Sales Arrive All at Once

Some perfectly good businesses earn almost nothing for months, then make most of their year in a few weeks. Here is how to read one without…

When a Rival Starts Giving It Away: What a Price War Really Tests

Nobody can pretend their way through a price war. It is the one test a business cannot revise for — and the results are printed, quarter…

More Packets, or a Bigger Price Tag? How to Read a Company’s Sales Growth

“Sales rose fifteen per cent.” That one sentence can describe two completely different businesses. Here is the simple question that tells them apart.

The Customer Who Makes the Rules: What Changes When a Company’s Main Buyer Is the Government

Every share you own comes with a set of customers attached to it. Here is what quietly changes inside a business when the biggest of those…

The Shopkeeper’s Cut: What a Company Pays to Sit on the Shelf, and What That Tells You

A plain-English guide to the trade margin: the slice of the printed price that never comes back to the company. Why a brand people ask for…

The Moat Made of Distance: Why the Cost of a Truck Protects Some Businesses

Cement, gravel, bricks and bottled water are shielded from distant competitors by nothing cleverer than the cost of the truck. A plain-English guide to value per…

Work Already Won: How to Read a Company’s Order Book

An order book is a company’s diary of work it has won but not yet done. Here is how a beginner can read one honestly —…

The Second Act: How to Tell Whether a Business Can Win More Than Once

Nearly every good company was built on one idea that worked. Whether it can find a second one decides the next twenty years. A plain-English guide…

The Revolving Door: What Staff Turnover Quietly Tells You About the Quality of a Business

A company publishes what share of its staff left during the year. Most beginners never look at it. A plain-English guide to staff turnover — what…

The Same Shop, One Year Later: How to Tell Real Growth From Just Opening More Doors

Rising sales can mean two completely different things: the shops you already had are selling more, or you simply own more shops. A plain-English guide to…

The Understudy: How to Tell Whether a Business Has Prepared for the Day Its Leader Leaves

A great manager is an asset. A great manager nobody could replace is a risk. A simple, beginner-friendly guide to reading a company's succession plan —…

The Promise Ledger: How to Check What a Company Said Last Year Against What It Actually Did

Every year the people running a business tell you what they intend to do. Almost nobody writes it down. A simple three-column ledger turns those sentences…

The Last Mile: Why Getting to the Shop Shelf Is One of India’s Quietest Moats

A great product nobody can find loses to an ordinary product that is everywhere. A plain-English lesson on distribution reach — the quiet, slow-built advantage that…

The Owner’s Chair: The Quiet Rights That Come With a Single Share

A share is not a ticket with a blinking price. It is a chair at the owners' table — with a report addressed to you, a…

The Cook and the Tiffin Service: Benjamin Graham’s Two Kinds of Investor

Before you ask which share, answer Benjamin Graham's older question: which kind of investor am I? A plain-English lesson on the defensive road, the enterprising road,…

The Share-Price Illusion: Why a ₹10 Share Is Not Cheap and a ₹1,00,000 Share Is Not Costly

Two friends met for evening tea. Ramesh could not stop smiling. “I have found a very cheap share,” he said. “It costs only ₹8. With my…

The Cube of Gold That Cannot Grow: Warren Buffett’s Famous Lesson on Assets That Work and Assets That Just Sit

All the gold ever mined would fit into one 68-foot cube — and a hundred years from now it would still be the same cube. Warren…

The securities quoted in these articles are for illustration only and are not recommendatory. Investment in securities market are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing.