About The Ledger Terminal
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
In the 1960s, a young investor named Warren Buffett discovered something remarkable in the pages of Value Line Investment Survey. The log-scaled price charts, dense with decades of earnings data, allowed him to see what others missed—the true trajectory of a business over time. Charlie Munger, his longtime partner, would later call these charts "one of the great tools ever invented for investors."
We built The Ledger Terminal because we believe that tool should exist for everyone.
The Lost Art of the One-Pager
There was a time when serious investors didn't scroll through endless dashboards or toggle between a dozen browser tabs. They studied. They sat with a single, dense page—whether from Moody's Manuals, Standard & Poor's tear sheets, or Value Line's legendary reports—and they understood a business.
These one-pagers packed decades of financial history into a format you could hold in your hands. Revenue trends. Profit margins. Return on equity. Book value growth. All visible at a glance, all telling the story of how a company actually performed, not how it promised to perform.
Somewhere along the way, we lost this. Modern financial websites give you real-time quotes and flashy charts, but they've forgotten the craft of density—of giving you everything you need to make a decision on a single page.
What We Believe
Log-scaled charts reveal the truth. A stock that goes from $10 to $20 has the same visual distance as one going from $100 to $200. This is how you spot compounders. This is how you see sustainable growth versus one-time jumps. Buffett learned this from Value Line. Now you can too.
Fair value is grounded in fundamentals. Our valuation chart overlays earnings-based fair value on price history. When price diverges far above the fundamental trend line, you're paying for hope. When it dips below, you're buying reality at a discount.
Five years of data is the minimum. Anyone can look good for a quarter. Businesses reveal themselves over years. That's why we show you a decade of financial history—enough to see through the cycles, the one-time charges, and the accounting creativity.
Simplicity is not the same as easy. Our one-pagers are dense. They require attention. They reward study. We don't dumb things down because we believe investors deserve to be treated like the intelligent adults they are.
The Value Line Inheritance
Arnold Bernhard founded Value Line in 1931. His insight was simple but revolutionary: plot price against earnings on a logarithmic scale, and patterns emerge that are invisible on conventional charts. A business growing earnings at 15% annually traces a straight upward line. A business in decline slopes downward, no matter how the headlines spin it.
Buffett has said he read every page of the Value Line reports. Munger has recommended them to generations of investors. We studied those pages too—the layout, the density, the respect for the reader's intelligence.
The Ledger Terminal is our attempt to carry that tradition forward into the modern era. Same principles. Same rigor. Freely accessible.
Built for Investors Who Read
This is not a trading platform. We don't care about your order flow. We don't send push notifications about market volatility. We built The Ledger Terminal for people who want to sit with a company's numbers, think carefully, and make informed decisions.
If you miss the old days of Moody's Manuals and Value Line binders—or if you never experienced them but wish you had—welcome home.
The Ledger Terminal is an independent research tool. We are not affiliated with Value Line, Moody's, or Berkshire Hathaway. We simply share their belief that good investment decisions start with good information, presented clearly.