Screening the Market

Another very practical book I?ve been reading is How to Value Shares and Outperform the Market by Glenn Martin, published by Harriman House

I?m always slightly wary of boosterish titles about outperforming the market, and even more suspicious about quantitative systems. But Martin has been quietly blazing a trail in the last few years using a software-based system called ShareMaestro. Once you cut through the jargon, you discover it?s a rigorous way of screening the market based on value based criteria, not dissimilar to the approach taken by Gervais Williams.

At the core of Martin?s approach is the use of dividends as way of divining whether a share is a buy. His new book fleshes out the thinking behind the system, links it to the broader argument around value investing and shows how to use it with adventurous investments such as covered warrants.