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The slow way, made survivable

A value-investing method, and the machine that keeps it honest. Twenty-three short chapters in two parts, for a reader who has never heard of value investing and does not know what a scheduled job is. It sells nothing. If you finish it you will not know what to buy; you will know what it takes to find out.

How the site is built to be read

Every page has the full chapter list, a line saying where you are, and previous and next links that name the neighbouring chapters. The left and right arrow keys move between chapters. Each chapter has at most one level of fold: "the exact rule" and "where this comes from" open on demand and can be ignored. Numbered notes sit in the margin beside their sentence on a wide screen, and directly after the sentence on a phone. Nothing needs a network connection, and everything works with scripts off; a script only adds the arrow keys, the "continue" link, and one movable figure in chapter 7.

The colours, and what each one means

Five meanings, one colour each, the same in every figure, never the only signal.

• Value, blue: what a business is worth, and the owner's estimate of it. Square markers.
• Price, orange: what the market quotes. Circle markers.
• Pass, green: a test passed, a signal arrived. Tick.
• Fail or alarm, vermillion: a test failed, a stop, an alert. Cross.
• Missing, hatched grey: could not be checked. Question mark.
• The owner, purple: a human decision.

The chapters

1. Part One · The method
2. 1The problemAbout two thousand companies you could buy a piece of, one person, a few evenings a week, and no way to know whether you are fooling yourself.About 5 min10-min route
3. 2What value investing isA piece of a real business is worth something. The market quotes a price for it every day. Those are two different numbers, and the gap between them is the whole opportunity.About 9 min10-min route
4. 3This project's flavourOne person's version of the method, with four habits that make it unusual, and a tool built around those habits rather than around a market.About 6 min
5. 4The screener: two thousand to a handfulA coarse mechanical pass that removes what can be faulted on public figures, so that a person's reading time goes only to what survives. It finds nothing. It only removes.About 10 min
6. 5Why a name is refused, and why that is the normal outcomeMost companies that reach the reader are sent away. The gates are designed to say no, a failed gate stays failed, and refusing to judge a business you cannot judge is a real answer.About 9 min
7. 6What gets readOnly the company's own filings. Every figure with its origin, period and page. Nothing stretched, scaled or annualised to fill a gap. A concrete example of the wrong kind of number and what believing it would cost.About 8 min
8. 7The reverse DCFDo not ask what a business is worth. Ask what the price is assuming, and whether you believe it. Same arithmetic, run backwards, and a different kind of question comes out.About 10 min10-min route
9. 8Pre-registration: write the belief before you see the numberCalculate what the price assumes first and whatever you write afterwards lands suspiciously close to it. Every human does this. So the belief is written first, timestamped, and a view written after the number was seen is void.About 10 min10-min route
10. 9The three outcomesEvery test ends PASS, FAIL or DATA MISSING. The third is not a weaker version of the second, and a system that quietly records 'could not check' as 'failed' will lie to you in both directions.About 6 min
11. 10The funnel: six statusesEvery company the method has touched sits in exactly one of six states. For each: what happens there, what the tool does, what the owner does, and what makes a name fall out.About 9 min
12. 11The decisionNever 'a buy'. A buy below price X, under conditions Y, with stop Z, all written before the money moves. The discount demanded scales with how well the owner believes he understands the business.About 8 min
13. 12The shadow bookEvery refusal is measured against the market afterwards. A system that only measures what it bought cannot learn, and a process that only refuses, and never scores its refusals, cannot be shown to be wrong.About 7 min
14. Part Two · The machine
15. 13Why the method needed a machineA method on paper decays: you forget, you drift, you re-argue a settled question the day a price moves. The machine's job is to measure and to remember. It is built, deliberately, not to decide.About 7 min10-min route
16. 14How the program is put togetherSeven kinds of piece and the walls between them. The interesting part is not what each piece does but what it is forbidden from doing.About 9 min
17. 15Where the data lives and how it is kept honestEvery figure with its origin, every valuation with its eight declarations, every run with its own row. Why a valuation that cannot complete its record prints nothing rather than a number with a warning.About 8 min
18. 16The rules fileA written framework, amended only by dated, numbered rulings. A rule question and a bug go to different files. Writing the rule before the situation arises is what stops you bending it once you have a stake in the answer.About 8 min10-min route
19. 17The nightly runAt half past ten a clock fires. Prices are re-checked against decisions already made, files are written, and the run leaves by one of two exits: a quiet signal to an outside observer, or a shout to the owner's phone.About 7 min
20. 18The dead man's switchA crashed run and a run with nothing to say used to look identical: both were silence. Now one observer shouts when something breaks on the machine, and another alarms on the absence of a signal, which is the only alarm a dead machine can still raise.About 9 min10-min route
21. 19The phone problemA decision is useless on a server in another country when the price moves. The last mile of the investing problem, and the shape built to cover it: the machine dials out, nothing dials in, and the front door asks who you are before anything behind it is reachable.About 9 min
22. 20The boundaryOne file served, every other path refused. The folder behind the server holds dozens of private files. The difference between one file exposed and all of them is a single block of configuration, and removing it would expose everything silently.About 5 min
23. 21The page that arrivesWhat the owner sees on the phone, and the rules on what it may say: a distance from a price, never a verdict; no buy-side condition without the conditions that qualify it; its own age stated twice so a stale page cannot pass as fresh.About 8 min
24. 22What it does not doThe security limits, stated as the deployment notes state them. Then the method's limits: it cannot tell you a business is good, it cannot make you patient, it cannot stop you overriding it, and it refuses to decide anything for you. The last is deliberate.About 7 min
25. 23The slow way, made survivableThe method was written before the code, and the code cannot overrule it. Every refusal is measured. Every rule states its price, including the ones that were wrong and were withdrawn. This is not a shortcut.About 4 min10-min route

Two names

Every worked example uses NAME A, and occasionally NAME B, which are fictional companies with round numbers. No real company, price, holding or address appears anywhere on this site; where a real defect is described, the name has been removed.

The slow way, made survivable. Built 2026-09-13. The research behind the design and the sources for every borrowed idea are in All sources. Not financial advice: one private investor's method, shared as it is.