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The Intelligent Investor

4.2 of 5 stars 4.20 · rating details · 5,790 ratings · 285 reviews

The classic text annotated by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig to update Benjamin Graham's timeless wisdom for today's market conditions. Warren Buffet: "By far the best book on investing ever written."

Considered the greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949. Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, PerfectBound's revised edition includes updated commentary, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles.

More than one million hardcovers sold

Now available for the first time in paperback!

The Classic Text Annotated to Update Graham's Timeless Wisdom for Today's Market Conditions

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.

Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles.

Vital and indispensable, this HarperBusiness Essentials edition of The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals.

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Kindle Edition, Revised Edition

Published (first published 1949)

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Sep 03, 2008 Andy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

The classic book on investing by the man who taught Warren Buffett. Originally written 50 years ago, and it is still relevant. The same lessons applied to specific industries and companies at the time of the writing have obvious parallels to different industries and companies today.

And there are some radical ideas, despite it's age, that fly in the face of "conventional wisdom". The most important example in my opinion was the idea of how much risk you should have in your investments:
The "risk"...more

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Nov 09, 2008 Brent rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

OK, the recent stock market drops scared me. I got hit by the drops in 99 and said I would never let it happen again. This time I had what I thought would be value stocks. The problem was I didn't know if I should sell or hold the stocks. So for $8 I bought a used copy of Ben Graham's book. I stopped reading my other book and read this book like crazy.

It was the best $8 ever spent. It teaches you some basics about the behavior of the market and it teaches you to be very careful. I learned some...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ben Graham hoped every day to do “something foolish, something creative and something generous.”

The secret to your financial success is inside yourself. If you become a critical thinking and you invest with patient confidence, you can take steady advantage of even the worst bear market. By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.

All of...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Tim Chang rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

To be honest, the commentary and footnotes of this book were more useful to me than the original content. The book in its original form is obviously outdated in terms of the specific examples it gives for ways to invest and the different companies it details. However, the commentary by Jason Zweig draws from the fundamental messages behind the book to provide more up-to-date advice on how to invest. Undoubtedly, Benjamin Graham provided the foundation for the commentary with his book, but I pers...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Alvin Lim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: investing-books

More than one million hardcovers sold
Now available for the first time in paperback

The Classic Text Annotated to Update Graham's Timeless Wisdom for Today's Market Conditions

The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made "The Intelligent Investor" the stock market bible ever since...more

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Apr 23, 2010 Aik Yong Heng rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: economics-and-finance

The central Idea that I got from this book is that an Index Stock Fund outperforms other equity funds on a historical basis. And sometimes it outperforms active investing too. And from my wife’s portfolio of 5 years, it seems to be true.

The other Idea is the emotional Mr. Market. The stock market as a speculative investment is a zero-sum game, and Mr. Market plays the role of the crazy trader who trades stocks at a different price everyday. Of course, the book encourages investing for the long t...more The central Idea that I got from this book is that an Index Stock Fund outperforms other equity funds on a historical basis. And sometimes it outperforms active investing too. And from my wife’s portfolio of 5 years, it seems to be true.

The other Idea is the emotional Mr. Market. The stock market as a speculative investment is a zero-sum game, and Mr. Market plays the role of the crazy trader who trades stocks at a different price everyday. Of course, the book encourages investing for the long term where the stock value grows along with the economy. But for active investors, it is recommended that they study Mr. Market’s price variations and invest in their preferred stock at their lowest price.

Investment here is also specifically mentioned to be different from trading or speculating. Some may call it ‘Fundamental’ investing and what it means is just that one must study the company’s fundamentals (financials/management) before selecting it for investment. Normally the investment would be long term and the only time to sell is if the company’s direction or management does not fit with investor’s requirements anymore.

Lastly, the book introduces the concept of Margin of Safety. Of course, the writer puts this concept in context of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The idea is that even if a stock looks cheap on paper, you still can get screwed by the irrational Mr. Market who prices it lower and lower. So a stock that looks borderline cheap is not good enough. Ben Graham recommends to have a bigger Margin of Safety and buy it really cheap. It will help with the sleeping soundly at night too. It is the result of living through the Great Depression and it is a lowering of one’s risk to the point where the returns will be quite limited too.

For a basic course in investing, one cannot go wrong with this book, BUT for normal readers, the writing style might be a bit archaic. It IS written quite a long time ago. For those who have read this book, they will have the basics to invest but in order to get a better return, they must next read Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits.(less)

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Jan 23, 2010 Kenyon Harbison rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Warren Buffett's pick as the greatest investment book of all time, and it really does live up to that review. Some highlights:

1) Your main goal should be to not LOSE money; so understand the distinction between 'investing' and 'speculating,' and understand that most so-called investors are actually speculators. Minimize the extent to which you are a speculator. If you go in trying to get rich quick, you'll lose.
2) To that end, trailing P/E should be less than 15 and P/E * P/B (tangible) should b...more Warren Buffett's pick as the greatest investment book of all time, and it really does live up to that review. Some highlights:

1) Your main goal should be to not LOSE money; so understand the distinction between 'investing' and 'speculating,' and understand that most so-called investors are actually speculators. Minimize the extent to which you are a speculator. If you go in trying to get rich quick, you'll lose.
2) To that end, trailing P/E should be less than 15 and P/E * P/B (tangible) should be < or = 22.5.
3) But don't buy SIMPLY because the company is cheap; look for EPS growth ideally > 30% (cumulative) over the course of the prior 10 years. This is a good indicator of a stable and sound business model.
4) Look for a current ratio (current assets / current liabilities) greater than 2, as a signal the company is financially secure.
5) Strongly prefer companies with dividends, and with consistent dividend growth.
6) Don't invest in companies that have had negative earnings-per-share in the last three years.
7) But Graham's real key is PSYCHOLOGY: Market crashes should be thought of as exciting and delightful fire sales on the best stocks. By contrast, be terrified when the market has gone up far, fast, and RESIST THE URGE TO START buying more stock when the market is up. (People criticize Graham for advocating market-timing, but really he advocates a form of dollar-cost-averaging, where one increasingly invests in companies that look objectively undervalued when the market goes down, and (assuming one doesn't hold forever) divests slowly as the market goes up, if in one's view one's individual stocks become over-valued -- he does not advocate investing or divesting simply because the market goes down or up, one always looks at individual companies.)

He also has very interesting discussions of bonds, though I found them less relevant because I don't invest in bonds directly. To Graham, incidentally, Buffett added: A) know when to break these rules; B) prefer companies with wide inherent 'moats' (his famous example is that if you gave him a billion dollars today, he could not create a brand that would compete effectively with Coca Cola); C) buy private, illiquid-but-outstanding businesses on the cheap -- e.g., See's Candies; D) own and use an insurance company business to create 'float' from premiums that can be used for investing; E) invest in what you can understand. Sadly "C" and "D" are not feasible for the rest of us, but between Buffett and Graham the small-time investor has about all he/she needs in order to at least not get hosed!(less)

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Jul 09, 2009 Scott Dinsmore rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Why I Read this Book: Warren Buffet became the successful man he is today greatly as a result of what he learned from the man who wrote this book. We have the chance to read exactly what he read.

Review:

Whether you are an avid investor with a complex understanding of the markets or a beginner who is yet to start learning, there is little doubt that you have heard of Warren Buffet. He represents a level of success that very few people ever reach. Most of us know Buffet as the second richest man in...more Why I Read this Book: Warren Buffet became the successful man he is today greatly as a result of what he learned from the man who wrote this book. We have the chance to read exactly what he read.

Review:

Whether you are an avid investor with a complex understanding of the markets or a beginner who is yet to start learning, there is little doubt that you have heard of Warren Buffet. He represents a level of success that very few people ever reach. Most of us know Buffet as the second richest man in the world, but many of us do not stop to think that he has build his great fortune solely off of investing. He has not invented anything or built any specific business. He has gotten to where he is by nothing more than diligent value and principle based investing (with very little debt I might add).

I apologize for the long rant on Buffet especially since he only wrote the first few pages of this edition. The man behind this book’s genius is Benjamin Graham. It was many of his fundamentals and principles that got Buffet started with a foundation that soon grew to be insurmountable. The amazing thing is that anyone interested in these principles has the opportunity to buy a copy of this book for less than twenty dollars. It continues to blow me away; the amount of success-related knowledge that is available to us for the learning.

To be very honest up front, this is not the easiest read. It is written by a 20th century economist and quite frankly it often reads just like that. But to that note one should not pick this book up for humor and entertainment as much as he should to learn. Although there will be times when you will find yourself laughing or smiling at some of the stories told and how they ring true even today in our ever more sophisticated world. One such example is the concept of emotional investing, one of which most all of us have been guilty at one time or another. It is worth mentioning that for every bit of hard theory, this particular revised addition of the book has just about as much digestible commentary (courtesy of Jason Zweig) to help the reader through. This commentary is crucial to the level of satisfaction of the read.

I would not dare to get into the specifics of this book as I would not do them justice and I feel that the above should be more than enough reason to read the full edition. However I will comment on the over all tone of it. The book (as well as Buffet’s proven strategy) is based on a fundamental set of principles. These principles are something that, no matter what the circumstances, is never to be broken. This is how the rigor of an “intelligent investor” is maintained. I believe this to be the real difference between Graham and Buffet and the rest of the investment community (If you have not already, you should be sure to read Buffet’ s 13 principles on Berkshire’s website). Both these men display an inhumane level of disciple to stick to the very principles they have developed.

Having a principle-based investment strategy is something that will prove to be of much value as one progresses along his career (or hobby) of successful investing. If you are able to decide on a set of principles (be them your own or those of others) and stick to them at all costs, decisions suddenly become much more fluid and easy to make. How else do you think Buffet can make a $4 billon investment before lunch time?

The real reason I mention this is that it has a much greater underlying message. If principle based investing has proven so successful (provided your principles are sound of course) then imagine what can be accomplished in the overall success of ones life if you live by a firm set of principles and core values. This quickly becomes clear once you read through some of the top rated books in my personal development section. By now I hope you have already developed your set of core values by which to live. Now take advantage of this book to establish a similar set of values by which to judge personal investments. The added long term financial success will be explicit. Then again I guess you could just buy Berkshire, but perhaps you should make that decision for yourself after reading the book that helped create it.

-Reading For Your Success(less)

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Jun 21, 2012 Cliff rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Probably the most famous of all books about investing in stocks and bonds. The book was first published in 1949. This revised version of the 1973 fourth edition, published in 2006, contains detailed commentary and end-notes by Jason Zweig, a financial journalist.

Graham, born in 1894, came from an educated, but impoverished, background, went to Columbia University on a scholarship and was offered a faculty position at the age of 20 on the basis of his brilliant academic record. He had a long and...more

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Jun 21, 2010 Chad Warner rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Investors

Shelves: finance

If you read investing books or magazines, you've undoubtedly heard of Benjamin Graham. He's considered the father of value investing, and Warren Buffett is one of his disciples. In fact, The Oracle of Omaha called this book "the best book about investing ever written."

I have to disagree with Buffett on this one, but that's because I'm a very different type of investor than Buffett. I'm a Boglehead (follower of Vanguard founder John Bogle), so I invest through broadly diversified, passive index f...more

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Jan 12, 2011 Parksy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finance, non-fiction

Was recommended as a must read for getting into investing.
Overall very readable - some chapters get a little heavy into issues i'm not really interested in, like bonds for example - but overall a very good place to start.

Main gist:
- buy value, and it tells you how to identify value - mostly looking at P/E, growth, and dividend history
- don't listen to Mr. Market - the day to day changes of the market shouldn't affect your opinion if you've done your research
- don't day trade
- if you aren't going...more

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Apr 04, 2010 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business, philosophy

The value investors Bible.

If value investing had a holy book of scripture, this would be it! Not only was Ben Graham's timeless investment advice unassailable, but the commentary's after each chapter by Jason Zweig were current and refreshing.

While I learned and re-learned many truths with this book, some of the most valuable ideas were to distinguish between "investing" and "speculation." Graham asserts that most of what is called investing today would be more accurately named speculation. Also...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Dave Maddock marked it as aborted · review of another edition

Shelves: investing

I've started this book, but haven't made much traction.

As a manual for value investing it seems more hype than practical because the main text is rather dated. The end of each chapter has commentary which attempts to rectify that problem, but with limited success--at least in the early sections I read. If your main concern is just to read a highly regarded financial book, this is definitely it though.

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Aug 26, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At long last, I finished The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. After hearing about the wonders of Graham as the teacher of Warren Buffett for so many years, it was a pleasure to get to know his work in person.

As Mr Buffett has said, there is no great secret in investing - buy low and sell high - but Graham takes the time to educate and talk through why this tends to be so hard for mortal beings as well as some guidelines to not let yourself be carried away by Mr Market. Investing is like...more

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Jun 23, 2009 Phil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's amazing that this book is still relevant after so many years. Graham uses 100 years of stock market data to humble and convince you that you never know what the market will do and if you ever start thinking you do know, be careful. Based on the idea that you don't know, he then builds common sense strategy for investment.

The newest edition as been updated with a chapter of commentary after each of Graham's original chapters that attempts to discuss how Graham's advice would have held up th...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Benjamin Graham lays out a compelling case for value investing in this book. He draws a fine distinction between an investor as someone who treats stocks as purchasing part of a business, vs a speculator as someone who buys stocks hoping the price will go up today or maybe tomorrow, with no real knowledge of the business who's shares they bought. The commentary chapters push the point further by repeatedly showing that Warren Buffett and others like him follow Graham's method and have been pheno...more

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Jan 09, 2010 Forager rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Overall, it was a fairly good "foundations" book, but I think there must be better resource out there. A lot of the basic material of this book has been passed on just through financial culture in general, perhaps most strongly through Warren Buffet.

The first hundred and fifty pages were absolutely painful. Graham pointlessly rambles about stock returns from the mid 1800's to the 1970's. After that, however, the books gets much better as Graham explains the foundations of analyzing securities va...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Mike Gibbs rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: investing, listend-to

The Intelligent Investor is a great reminder of what investing used to be before it was overrun with institutional investing. Graham does a great job focusing on principles that are still great advice today (purchase undervalued companies, understand the difference between "speculating" and "investing", etc.), but some of the best things I learned from this book were to recognize the things that HAVE changed over the decades since this book was written and how they have impacted investing. The a...more

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Jul 18, 2011 Monica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: financial-management

Benjamin Graham’s last line in The Intelligent Investor sums up the entire book in his trade-mark common-sense way: “ To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.”

First published in 1949, this version that I read was re-published in 2005 with a forward written by John Bogle who started Vangard Mutual Fund. Bogle’s forward serves as a very good summary of The Intelligent Investor, highlighting key points in a c...more Benjamin Graham’s last line in The Intelligent Investor sums up the entire book in his trade-mark common-sense way: “ To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.”

First published in 1949, this version that I read was re-published in 2005 with a forward written by John Bogle who started Vangard Mutual Fund. Bogle’s forward serves as a very good summary of The Intelligent Investor, highlighting key points in a crystal clear way. So I found it useful to read the forward again after finishing to book to help me refresh the content quickly.

Graham’s language may be a bit old fashioned, so some may find his writing style takes a little bit of getting used to. However, once I got my pace of reading going, I find the old fashion style gives me a sense of comfort and assurance – as if a grandfather was sharing all his valuable experience with me. Certainly good things stand the test of time, just as sound values: “Sound investment principles generally produced sound investment results…we must act on the assumption that they would continue to do so.”

Graham is very clear form the start that he is not writing for speculators but for the layman who wants to have a sound approach to grow his weath steadily. He believes that lay investors can achieve “a creditable if unspectacular result with a minimum of effort and capability…since anyone – by just buying and holding a representative list – can equal the performance of the market averages…”

He warned those who tries to beat the market, as many smart people have tied to do this and failed. How he explained this makes a lot of sense to me - every stock market broker thinks he can outdo the market. That means the stock market experts as a whole is trying to beat itself – a logical contradiction. They just cancel each other out.

Thus, one should not rely on a financial advisor who promises the sky and raise your hopes that he can do better that the market average. That, claims Graham, is not possible.

“The real money in investing will have to be made, as most of it has been in the past, not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interest and dividends and benefiting form their longer-term increase in value.”

Graham chastises average investors for their sloth and ignorance, for willingly giving up their responsibility and rights as business owners to management. This, he feels, is due to the institutionalisation of financial services which has left investors a step removed from ownership.

He disagrees with the commonly help view that “If you don’t like the management, sell the stock.” He feels this does nothing to improve bad management, only puts down the price of the stock and shifts the ownership to someone else. “Investors as a whole seem to have abandoned all claim to control over the paid superintendents of their property.”

Ultimately, it is important for investors to give themselves a margin of safety by buying a stock at a price that is lower that its appraised value and to diversify the portfolio. These would put the investors in good stead, as against speculators.

I like this book. It does not give you many formulas for security analysis (Graham says you can read further in his earlier book Security Analysis). What The Intelligent Investor does is that it lays the foundation for laymen by giving a sound approach to investment, written with common sense and simplicity.
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May 19, 2010 Doug rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business, nonfiction

A very good approach to investing that stands the test of time - although, it is pretty easy to tout the benefits of value investing when comparing it to dotcom stocks like they do in the most current edition. The most important lesson is the discipline needed to be successful at investing: "One lucky break, or one supremely shrewd decision - can we tell them apart? - may count for more than a lifetime of journeyman efforts. But behind the luck, or the crucial decision, there must usually exist...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Wendy Yu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

2013 seems to be a good time to reread this book ...

"If the investor concentrates his portfolio on common stocks he is very likely to be lead astray either by exhilarating advances or by distressing declines. This is particularly true if his reasoning is geared closely to expectations of further inflation. For then, if another bull market comes along, he will take the big rise not as a danger signal of an inevitable fall, not as a chance to cash in on his handsome profits, but rather as a vindic...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Andy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A great foundation for everyone who is interested in investing their money wisely. There is an element of chance when it comes to investing in the stock market, but this is a common element found in basically all areas of life, apart from that which concerns all-mighty God.
I enjoyed learning that a careful analysis of the basic elements that make up the balance-sheet of a company can lead one to have better chances of getting a decent return on his invested capital.
I have to admit that I skipp...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Christian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: investing

There was a lot of interesting history in this book, especially on previous market crashes. I kinda wish there was a newer edition of it, to include the most recent recession.

The advice itself felt less applicable in today's world, because most people should just own index funds, whereas this book focuses on individual stocks, so this felt more like background information. The commentary does try to update this to the current era, but even so, it does not feel very relevant today.

The commentator...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Massimo Troiani rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was suggested as one of the must read books for insvestors. After going through the entire book I must say that it was a difficult read. Not because it has complicated technical examples, but because of the way it has been written. Some of the chapters were just plain hard to understand.

I was also reading the e-book version and the updated annotations were in the back of the book and I could not tie those to the actual chapters so that made the updated examples very hard to connect wi...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Joseph rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd read several books about Benjamin Graham as well as articles by him in the past, but this was my first foray into reading a book authored by him. It's definitely a great primer into the world of value investing and not only outlines its tenets but also their rationale. Several historical examples are used to illustrate his points.

One criticism: for all the words spent on intrinic value, no clear cut way is proposed for its calculation, however. Several proxies (i.e. book value, fair value, e...more

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May 20, 2011 John Hill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a great book for the beginning investor like me. While I found some of Graham's language hard to follow, the commentery chapters greatly cleared things up for me and updated Graham's examples with modern day equivelents.

The only issue I had,(and this is probably because I have the e-book version on the Kindle) but the tables were very hard to see and hard to understand so I mainly skipped over them.

All in all, if you are looking to become an investor or just want to know more about the...more

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May 04, 2013 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: business

This edition combines “the classic text on value investing” with a foreword by John C. Bogle, the founder or the Vanguard Group. Not surprisingly, Bogle’s foreword unabashedly promotes investing in passively managed index funds, using quotes of Graham to bolster his position, while Graham’s actual text is somewhat favorable on the topic but mostly lukewarm.

I first heard about this book while reading about the investment strategies of a certain student of Benjamin Graham. You may have heard of h...more This edition combines “the classic text on value investing” with a foreword by John C. Bogle, the founder or the Vanguard Group. Not surprisingly, Bogle’s foreword unabashedly promotes investing in passively managed index funds, using quotes of Graham to bolster his position, while Graham’s actual text is somewhat favorable on the topic but mostly lukewarm.

I first heard about this book while reading about the investment strategies of a certain student of Benjamin Graham. You may have heard of him: his name starts with “W” and ends with “arren Buffet”. It was interesting to read this book and see the original text and examples which have often been cited by Buffet himself. It was also interesting to see where Buffet and Graham disagree.

Buffet and Graham agree on several things [1]. For one, they agree that market timing strategies and growth-investing are largely speculative and impossible to reliably implement, while an investment strategy based on value investing will usually achieve good results in a diversified portfolio. They both believe that the key to value investing is purchasing stocks that are selling well below their “intrinsic” value. Thus, the majority of the text discusses the different factors involved in evaluating the value of a business.

One interesting point where Buffet and Graham disagree is on the topic of dividends. Graham argues that investors should only invest in issues that pay a reasonable dividend. Buffet’s own company, Berkshire Hathaway never pays dividends. Graham believes that a company that doesn’t pay a dividend is acting irresponsibly by favoring the interests of the larger shareholders over the smaller minority shareholders, while Buffet believes that it is in the interest of all the shareholders for the company to reinvest its earnings if it can do so at a better return than the market indexes.

This is an investment book written in the 40’s. Although much of it is still useful today, specific examples are largely out of date. The security analysis is impacted enormously by the then recent advent of World War II as well as the slightly more distant Great Depression. I suspect, for example, that Graham would no longer hold to his insistence that, for individual investors, US Savings Bonds are nearly always better investments than corporate bounds.

Overall, I was interested in this book mostly because of the association of its author with Warren Buffet. As far as a practical guide to investing, it has some good information but I would hope that there exists a more up-to-date guide on value investing.

---

[1] My assessments of Warren Buffet’s investment strategies are based mostly on some random book I read a long time ago of which I cannot remember the name, and also on a certain amount of perusal of his letters to the shareholders of his company, Berkshire Hathaway.
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Jan 02, 2012 Omar Halabieh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a book that has been on my reading list for a while - as The reference in the investment field (from a fundamental analysis perspective). As Benjamin puts it in the introduction: "the purpose of this book is to supply, in a form suitable for the laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy."

The author makes it very clear from the beginning of the book (and throughout it) that his advice is addressed to investors and not speculators (see excerpts below). Within t...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Phillip rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The reason this is 5 stars is because of chapters 8 and 20. This was written more than 60 years ago. In very clear and simple language, Graham writes a book that makes sense and elucidates principles that are timeless, three of which, in my view, are the essence of investing and not speculating (investing defined as upon thorough analysis that promises return of principal and a reasonable rate of return): (1) the metaphor of Mr. Market -which, incidentally, Graham, in my view, invented behaviora...more

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Jan 29, 2011 Steve Bradshaw rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: investment

Similar to the bible in that there are a few technical parts that haven't dated well but the overall message sheds light on human behavior and provides powerful, specific guidance on how to act that is just as relevant today as it was at writing. Actually, now that I think about it, it's much more defensible than the bible!

A must read for anyone considering actively managing their own investment portfolio. Out and out the best book I've ever read on investing. I highly recommend this version wi...more

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About Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham (May 8, 1894 – September 21, 1976) was an American economist and professional investor. Graham is considered the first proponent of value investing, an investment approach he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd through various editions of their famous book Security Analysis. Disciples of value investing include Jean-Marie Evei...more

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Books by Benjamin Graham

Security Analysis: Principles and Technique

The Interpretation of Financial Statements: The Classic 1937 Edition

Security Analysis: The Classic 1940 Edition

The Rediscovered Benjamin Graham: Selected Writings of the Wall Street Legend

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Quotes from The Intelligent Investor

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.” — 7 people liked it

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The Intelligent Investor

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