Finding bargain shares in developed markets is a difficult task. Share prices have been rising since the depths of the financial crisis, in part due to central banks flooding markets with capital, and they remain close to record highs even after recent sell-offs.
The price at which a share is bought is one of the few things an individual investor can control, and a major determining factor in how an investment will perform long-term.
Spotting shares that don’t deserve to be cheap is known as “value investing”. One form of this is to target stocks that have assets, such as cash and property, which are worth more than the market value of the company itself. This effectively buys those assets at...