As valuearb pointed out, value investing basically comes down to reading 10Ks and 10Qs which are freely available on the SEC database. You read those to get the complete financial health of a company, and using those numbers, calculate what you believe to be the fair value of a company.
"Well if it's a belief, then isn't value investing just as much speculation as anything else?"
That's where the term Margin of Safety comes in. The financials of a company provide a delta, some min and max of where the company can go. When you plug in your estimates, and that delta's minimum is still less than the current price of the stock, esp by a significant margin, then you've picked a winner...more specifically, a winner over the next few years. Remember, plenty of events can occur between now and when your value is realized, and one of the other traits of a strong value investor is the ability to weather the storm. Oftentimes these companies with sufficient margin of safety will continue to fall in price before they rise again, one cannot time the market for the zenith nor the nadir of a stock's price.
"Well if it's a belief, then isn't value investing just as much speculation as anything else?"
That's where the term Margin of Safety comes in. The financials of a company provide a delta, some min and max of where the company can go. When you plug in your estimates, and that delta's minimum is still less than the current price of the stock, esp by a significant margin, then you've picked a winner...more specifically, a winner over the next few years. Remember, plenty of events can occur between now and when your value is realized, and one of the other traits of a strong value investor is the ability to weather the storm. Oftentimes these companies with sufficient margin of safety will continue to fall in price before they rise again, one cannot time the market for the zenith nor the nadir of a stock's price.