Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. Modern value investing derives from the investment philosophy taught by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd at Columbia Business School starting in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis.
The early value opportunities identified by Graham and Dodd included stock in public companies trading at discounts to book value or tangible book value, those with high dividend yields and those having low price-to-earning multiples or low price-to-book ratios.