Reading is important to make money in the stock market , says this value investor, who takes more pride in introducing himself as an entrepreneur and columnist.Chennai-based Shyam Sekhar agreed to talk to us on one condition: we do not flaunt big numbers. Some of his value picks have given multibagger returns over the past decade.Sekhar has been active on Dalal Street since 1990, and he loves to spot quality businesses more as a passion than a way of making money.Some of his early discoveries include Hatsun Agro KRBL and Pidilite Industries; stocks he has been holding for more than a decade now.Look at the performance chart: KRBLis up nearly 7,500 per cent in last 10 years; Hatsun Agro 5,250 per cent and Pidilite 900 per cent. He bought KRBL first a decade ago and raised his holdings further in 2012.He has also been holding Cera Sanitaryware and Jyant Agro Organics for last eight years and La Opala Glass for six. Shares of Cera Sanitaryware have climbed nearly 4,400 per cent in last eight years to close at Rs 3,219 on October 13, 2017, rising from Rs 70 on October 17, 2011. Jayant Agro has climbed over 1,100 per cent in last eight years, while La Opala RG is up 2,000 per cent in six years.ETMarkets.com could not independently verify Sekhar’s holdings at present or back then. It may also mean he doesn't have a huge portfolio currently. But this investor has a huge fan following on social media, where he shares his thoughts regularly.Three pillars — reading, observation and experience — can make you successful, says Sekhar, 48. That’s true of any domain.“Profitability, sustainability, management commitment and corporate governance are first things I focus on to spot a quality stock,” says Sekhar.He admits stock spotting is not as easy as it may sound and there is no particular way of intentionally discovering them.Intuition often works. Sekhar’s wisdom from two decades: “Learn to be intuitive and practise thinking counter-intuitively. Both need years of practice and are deeply personal pursuits. It helps when you have to stand alone. Never become too close to corporate managements or fall too much in love with a business,”And then comes a point when he gives it all away. “I started using Michael E Porter’s framework for stock picking in 1992. This lateral use of a business management tool in investing has stood me well over the past 25 years.”American academic and economist Porter is known for his generic strategies that describe how a company pursues competitive advantage across its chosen market scope.Sekhar also follows Philip Fisher’s style of investing and has been deeply influenced by Walter Schloss, the man with years of practice in investing in small and micro-cap stocks.Fisher belongs to the league of those very few super investors who have shaped ace investor Warren Buffett’s investing style. American investor Schloss is a well-regarded as a value investor and a notable disciple of the Benjamin Graham school of investingInvestment style is important to Sekhar. “I lost a decade trying to decide which style suits me,” he confesses.The man, who started investing in stocks from the day he was out of college at the age of 21, has a habit of poring over annual reports of companies. He gets over 500 of them, and reads most of them.Shyam Sekhar credits his neighbour MK Sudharsan for encouraging him to enter the stock market. That man taught him fundamentals of investing in 1990.“It is his blessing and my luck that I was at the right place at the right time,” Sekhar recalls.In 2009, he started ithought, a personal finance company that advises clients on end-to-end personal finance needs with domain specialisation in financial planning, equity research, fund research and investment strategy.“At ithought, we follow a unique investment model which is dynamic, personalised and forward looking. My personal learnings have been incorporated to make ithought a process-oriented and delivery-centric model,” he saysSekhar was the president of Tamil Nadu Investors Association between 2012 and 2015.I lost a decade in trying to figure out my natural style of investing; that was a failure Sekhar confesses.“You may wonder, ‘Where is the failure?’ The failure is in selling Fisherian stock picks like a Grahamian. No failure can be bigger than that.”Between 1996 and 2003 he almost completely changed his investment style from one that was closer to the Fisher style to the purist Graham-Schloss style.Sekhar says it took him long to understand the fine line between respecting other investing styles and adopting what works best for him. “While I do use both approaches, I lost a decade in making choices in my natural style,” he said.Looking at the current market , where both Sensex and Nifty are hovering around record levels, Sekhar hardly sees value in the performing parts of the market.Steel, niche tech and pharma look attractively valued from a contrarian viewpoint, he says, adding he was still studying these businesses and it is premature to name any stock.