THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR by Benjamin Graham

Author: Mr. Graham was a British-born American investor, economist, and professor. He is widely known as the "father of value investing” and wrote two of the founding texts in this style of investing: Security Analysis (1934) with David Dodd and The Intelligent Investor (1949). He was Warren Buffett’s teacher at Columbia. Book: The Intelligent Investor is a book about the generalities of value investing, not about the technique of analysing securities, that is, much more attention is paid to investment principles and investor's attitudes. Graham also said that this book would not teach us how to beat the market. With that in mind, the book provides three main ideas: 1. How we can minimize the odds of suffering irreversible losses. 2. How we can maximize the chances of achieving sustainable gains. 3. How we can control self-defeating behaviour that keeps most investors from reaching their full potential. Opinion: I know the Intelligent Investor is said to be the best book on investing ever written by a substantial part of the investing community (Warren Buffett among them.) However, I think it is a bit overvalued. There are two versions of the book available right now: the original one (300 pages, see pictures 4 & 5) and the new edition of 2003 (300 pages from Graham + 300 pages from Jason Zweig, a WSJ journalist). I found the book useful but somewhat boring, perhaps, you could save those almost 300 pages Mr. Zweig and obtain the same understanding... However, I would recommend to everyone both chapter 8 and 20. Chapter 8 is about Mr. Market. It helps you understand market psychology and benefiting from its volatility (something most academics seemingly not get). Chapter 20 refers to the idea of margin of safety, that is, buying with such a discount to intrinsic value that you are resilient to errors, volatility, or improbable outcomes without suffering a permanent loss of Capital. Pd: When rereading chapter 20 I realized about some similarities between Graham and Nassim Taleb. Will expand in the future.

Key Stats: -Pages: 587 (Old edition: 254) -Level: Basic/Intermediate -Mark: 8/10