One of my favorite investing stories comes from a 1978 John Train article about a Texas rice farmer and hog raiser named Mr. Womack.

The story begins with an investor who spent years trying every stock market strategy he could find. He studied charts. He followed the experts. He traded in and out of stocks. Yet year after year he managed to lose money.

Frustrated and discouraged, he was sitting in a Houston brokerage office when a veteran broker pointed across the room and asked a simple question:

“Would you like to meet a man who has never lost money in the stock market?”

The man was Mr. Womack, a rice farmer and hog raiser from Baytown, Texas.

He was not a market wizard. He was not an economist. He was not glued to a ticker screen all day. In fact, he only visited his broker every few years.

Yet over decades he quietly compounded wealth while many professional investors struggled to keep up.

His strategy was remarkably simple.

During bear markets, when financial headlines were gloomy and investors were convinced stocks would continue falling, Mr. Womack would pull out a stock guide and search for profitable, dividend-paying companies selling for less than $10 per share. He would buy a basket of roughly 30 of them and then go back to running his farm.

A few years later, when optimism returned and investors once again became excited about stocks, he would sell the entire group and patiently wait for the next opportunity.

Mr. Womack compared stocks to pigs.

When pork prices were depressed, he wanted to buy pigs cheaply because he knew better days would eventually return. Stocks were even better because they paid dividends while he waited.

He never worried about buying at the exact bottom or selling at the exact top.

He simply focused on buying at bargain prices and harvesting profits when conditions improved.

That story has always resonated with me because it captures the heart of successful investing.

The biggest money is rarely made chasing excitement.

It is made by buying good assets when nobody else wants them.

That brings us to this week’s Alpha Buying screen.

I wanted to build a modern version of the Mr. Womack approach.

We started by looking for stocks trading near their three-year lows. We limited the universe to companies priced below $20 per share. Then we added one of my favorite indicators in the entire investing toolbox: significant insider buying.

Think about what that combination represents.

A stock near a three-year low is usually a stock investors have given up on. Expectations are low. Sentiment is poor. Analysts have stopped talking about it. Institutions are often selling.

The market has largely written the company off.

That is exactly where we want to be looking.

As deep-value investors, our goal is not to buy what is popular.

Our goal is to buy what is cheap, neglected, misunderstood, and hated.

We want situations where the downside appears limited while the upside could be substantial if conditions become merely less bad.

The insider-buying requirement makes the screen even more powerful.

Corporate insiders possess an information advantage no analyst report can match.

They understand customer demand. They understand margins. They understand whether new initiatives are working. Most importantly, they understand what the business is worth.

Executives sell stock for dozens of reasons. They buy homes. They diversify. They pay taxes. They fund retirement plans.

But insiders buy stock for one reason.

They believe the shares are undervalued.

When directors and executives begin purchasing meaningful amounts of stock near multi-year lows, I pay attention.

They are voluntarily increasing their exposure at a time when most investors are running for the exits.

That does not guarantee success.

No screen ever will.

What it does is tilt the odds in our favor.

Over the years, some of the biggest winners I have found began as deeply unpopular stocks trading near their lows while insiders were aggressively accumulating shares.

The market saw problems.

Management saw opportunity.

Eventually the fundamentals improved and the stock price followed.

This week’s screen produced four particularly interesting candidates.

Orthofix Medical – (NASDAQ:OFIX)

Orthofix Medical is exactly the type of company that frequently appears on deep-value screens when sentiment becomes excessively negative.

The medical-device company develops products used in spine surgery, orthopedic reconstruction, bone-growth therapies, and deformity correction.

Shares have struggled following operational challenges and disappointing execution, but insiders have been stepping up to purchase stock at prices near multi-year lows.

Medical technology companies with established products and physician relationships rarely disappear overnight.

If management can stabilize operations and improve profitability, investors may eventually realize they were valuing a temporary problem as though it were permanent.

The insider buying suggests those closest to the business believe the market’s pessimism has gone too far.

American Integrity Insurance Group – (NYSE:AII)

American Integrity Insurance Group is one of the more intriguing contrarian opportunities on this week’s list.

The Florida-based property and casualty insurer operates in a sector many investors abandoned after years of hurricane losses, litigation concerns, and rising reinsurance costs.

Yet the operating environment in Florida has improved significantly.

Premium rates have increased, legal reforms have reduced claims abuse, and underwriting conditions have become more favorable.

Despite those improving fundamentals, shares remain under pressure.

Insider buying suggests management believes investors remain focused on yesterday’s problems while ignoring tomorrow’s earnings potential.

Insurance stocks often generate their best returns when headlines remain negative but business conditions quietly improve.

Crescent Capital BDC – (NASDAQ:CCAP)

Crescent Capital BDC combines insider buying with an asset class I continue to like quite a bit: private credit.

The company lends primarily to middle-market businesses through a diversified portfolio of senior secured loans.

Like much of the BDC sector, shares have faced pressure from concerns about credit quality and the future path of interest rates.

Yet insiders have been purchasing stock while it trades at a meaningful discount to net asset value.

Investors are collecting a double-digit dividend yield while waiting for sentiment to improve.

If credit losses remain manageable and economic conditions stay reasonably healthy, CCAP offers the potential for both attractive income and capital appreciation as the discount to intrinsic value narrows.

Swiss Helvetia Fund – (NYSE:SWZ)

Swiss Helvetia Fund may be the most interesting name in the group.

The closed-end fund combines several of my favorite themes: a substantial discount to net asset value, activist involvement, and a portfolio focused on undervalued securities and special situations.

Following a major strategic shift, Bulldog Investors repositioned the fund into a long-term total-return vehicle focused on bargain-priced securities, activist investments, merger-arbitrage opportunities, and other catalyst-driven situations.

The fund currently trades at roughly a 19% discount to net asset value, allowing investors to purchase a dollar’s worth of assets for approximately 81 cents.

That discount alone makes SWZ worth a closer look.

Add an experienced activist management team with a long history of unlocking value, and you have the ingredients for a potentially rewarding investment.

In many ways, SWZ may be the closest thing on this week’s list to the opportunities Mr. Womack sought decades ago.

The market has changed dramatically since Mr. Womack was flipping through stock guides looking for bargain-priced stocks.

Human nature has not.

Fear still creates opportunity.

Pessimism still drives prices below intrinsic value.

And insiders still tend to recognize value long before Wall Street catches on.

That is why we continue searching among the neglected, the misunderstood, and the out-of-favor.

The next great winner rarely starts out looking like a winner.

More often, it starts as a stock nobody wants to own.

Just the way Mr. Womack liked it.