1

I know its a general question but where do you start with value investing and finding undervalued companies? There must be a quick way to find a list of undervalued good companies? Thanks

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

There obviously is not such a list of companies, because if there were the whole world would immediately invest in them. Their price would rise like a rocket and they would not be undervalued anymore.

Some people think company A should be worth x per share, some people think it should be worth y. If the share price is currently higher than what someone thinks it should be, they sell it, and if it is lower than they think it should be they buy it.

The grand effect of this all is that the current market price of the share is more or less the average of what all investors together think it should currently be worth.

If you buy a single stock, hoping that it's undervalued and will rise, you may be right but you may equally well be wrong. It's smarter to diversify over lots of stocks to reduce the impact of this risk, it evens out.

There are "analysts" who try to make a guess of which stocks will do better, and they give paid advice or you can invest in their funds -- but they invariably do worse than the average of the market as a whole, over the long term.

So the best advice for amateurs is to invest in index funds that cover a huge range of companies and try to keep their costs very low.

Improve this answer
2
  • I would argue P/E is a good way to start a list and go from there for the most part in forming a 'list' of undervalued companies. But I agree if you have to ask the question the OP asked stick to ETF's or index funds.
    – Ross
    Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 16:51
  • @Ross: an answer that explains about that sort of thing would be a good addition to mine, I'd say.
    – RemcoGerlich
    Commented Dec 7, 2016 at 19:46

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .