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The value style

Value investing screener & playbooks, with receipts

Margin of safety: a business bought for less than it is worth, with the reasoning shown.

Value investing means buying a business for less than it is worth and insisting on a margin of safety before you commit. The playbooks below split on exactly that point. Graham Defensive, Lynch GARP and Magic Formula test what you pay: a P/E ceiling and a P/E × price-to-book ceiling, a PEG under 1, and a rank on EBIT/EV earnings yield. Buffett Quality, Piotroski and Munger Compounders carry no price term at all, reading profitability, financial strength and returns on capital instead, so a name can qualify at any valuation. The screener is where you bound valuation, quality and balance-sheet health together. Every name that passes shows the exact criteria it met and the figures behind them, and the filing behind a figure lives on that stock's own report rather than on the screen row.

What you can do today

real surfaces, live now — playbooks run nightly, every name shown with its math
Buffett QualityCriteria after Warren BuffettDurable moats: high returns on equity, fat margins, low debt, growing free cash flow.No price test: return on equity, gross margin, net margin, debt to equity and free-cash-flow growth. It reads the business, not what the business costs, so a name can qualify at any valuation.View list →Piotroski F-ScoreCriteria after Joseph PiotroskiFinancial strength across profitability, leverage, liquidity and efficiency.No price test: nine accounting signals across profitability, leverage, liquidity and efficiency, with the bar set at eight. A pass says the fundamentals held up, not that the stock is cheap.View list →Munger CompoundersCriteria after Charlie MungerHigh-ROIC businesses with the balance-sheet discipline to keep compounding.No price test: return on invested capital, net debt to EBITDA and an Altman Z-score in the safe zone. The screen's own page says it outright, that it filters on returns on capital, leverage and solvency, not valuation or margins.View list →Graham DefensiveCriteria after Benjamin GrahamMargin of safety: earnings stability, modest multiples, a strong balance sheet.Tests price directly: P/E at or below 15, and P/E × price-to-book at or below 22.5, alongside size, current ratio, an unbroken earnings record, a dividend paid and earnings growth of 3% a year.View list →Lynch GARPCriteria after Peter LynchGrowth at a reasonable price, judged on a historical-CAGR PEG.Tests price directly: a PEG below 1, which is the P/E divided by realized EPS growth, with that growth inside Lynch's 10 to 30% band. Two criteria, both of them price against growth.View list →Magic Formula®Criteria after Joel GreenblattCheap and good: the rank-sum of earnings yield and return on capital.Tests price directly: it ranks on EBIT/EV earnings yield, the cheap half, and on return on capital, the good half, then takes the top of the summed rank.View list →

Learn the method

What is value investing?The core idea, from first principles.Read →Margin of safetyWhy the gap between price and value is the whole game.Read →When is a stock undervalued?Reading valuation without fooling yourself.Read →How Tenet computes everythingEvery formula and data source, written out in the open.Read →

Common questions

Is this investment advice?

No. Tenet is educational research, not investment advice. Every screen and score is a mechanical read of public filings, shown with the underlying math so you can check the reasoning yourself. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and Tenet is not a registered investment adviser.

Where does the data come from?

Fundamentals come from company regulatory filings, normalized in Tenet's database. On a report's Statistics tab each metric label links to what that metric means, and the filing a company's fundamentals were drawn from is named and linked on its Financials tab, rather than on each individual figure.

What is a playbook?

A playbook is Tenet's own mechanical implementation of an investing strategy. Some carry criteria a named investor published, such as the Magic Formula criteria or Graham's defensive tests; others, like Dividend Growth and Quality Compounders, are Tenet's own, with no outside author. Each one recomputes nightly across US stocks, and every name that passes shows the exact criteria it met.

What makes a stock a value stock on Tenet?

It depends which one answered. Graham Defensive, Lynch GARP and Magic Formula apply a price test, so those are the ones asking whether a business trades below a conservative read of its worth, with a margin of safety: a P/E ceiling, a PEG under 1, a rank on EBIT/EV earnings yield. Buffett Quality, Piotroski and Munger Compounders apply no price test at all, so clearing one of those says the business is strong, not that the stock is cheap. The screener is where you bound valuation multiples and balance-sheet health directly. Every name shows the math, never a bare label.

Each Ruleset is independently developed by Tenet based on investment criteria described in publicly available sources associated with the referenced investor. References to third-party names and trademarks are for identification purposes only. Tenet is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by or otherwise associated with any referenced investor or trademark owner. Any selections, analyses, backtests, scores and performance information reflect Tenet's own interpretation and implementation and have not been prepared, reviewed or approved by the referenced investor or trademark owner. Third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. Inputs are derived from regulatory filings and normalized within Tenet's fundamentals database. Not investment advice. MAGIC FORMULA is a trademark of MagicFormulaInvesting.com LLC.
Methodology© 2026 Tenet Investing Inc. · Toronto, Canada

Data from Intrinio and Financial Modeling Prep.