The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday, April 22, edition that Scott Barbee manages the U.S.-based Aegis Value Fund, which had about $371-million (U.S.) in assets at the end of 2023. The Globe's regular guest columnist Norman Rothery writes that the fund focuses on small-cap stocks trading at low multiples of book value and cash flow, which sounds very Benjamin Graham-like. Mr. Graham is a 20th-century investing ace who mentored a young Warren Buffett. The fund also checks off several of Jason Zweig's criteria. Mr. Zweig is a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal. The fund outperformed the S&P 500 by an average of 3.2 percentage points annually from its inception in 1998 through to the end of 2023 and beat the S&P Small Cap 600 Pure Value index by an average of 2.1 percentage points annually over the 10 years to the end of 2023. So it is still possible for value-oriented portfolio managers to beat the broad market in the modern era. These days the fund favours energy and materials stocks, including a large number of Canadian names. Mr. Barbee likes International Petroleum and tiny Newcore Gold. He says they are trading at bargain multiples and are worthy of consideration.