Benjamin Graham - also known as The Dean of Wall Street and The Father of Value Investing - was a scholar and financial analyst who mentored legendary investors such as Warren Buffett, William J. Ruane, Irving Kahn and Walter J. Schloss.

Warren Buffett once gave a speech at Columbia Business School explaining how Graham's record of creating exceptional investors (such as Buffett himself) is unquestionable, and how Graham's principles are everlasting. The speech is now known as "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville".

Graham's first recommended strategy - for casual investors - was to invest in Index stocks.
For more serious investors, Graham recommended three different categories of stocks - Defensive, Enterprising and NCAV - and 17 qualitative and quantitative rules for identifying them.
For advanced investors, Graham described various special situations or "workouts".

The first requires almost no analysis, and is easily accomplished today with a good S&P500 Index fund.
The last requires more than the average level of ability and experience. Such stocks are also not amenable to impartial algorithmic analysis, and require a case-specific approach.

But Defensive, Enterprising and NCAV stocks can be reliably detected by today's data-mining software, and offer a great avenue for accurate automated analysis and profitable investment.