Product Description

The Original 1949 Edition. Benjamin Graham's classic best seller on value investing has taught and inspired hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. This reissue of the pure, unadulterated 1949 text by Graham offers the investing principles as he originally laid them out - principles that continue to stand more than half a century since the book was first published. Time and market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's basic strategies, and in today's volatile market, this is the most important book you will ever read on making the right decisions to protect your investments and make them a success.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5144 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

About the Author
Benjamin Graham (1894-1976), the father of value investing, has been an inspiration for many of today's most successful businesspeople. He is also the author of Securities Analysis and The Interpretation of Financial Statements.

Customer Reviews

The gold standard in investment titles
This classic book on investing belongs on the bookshelf of every investor. The principles that Benjamin Graham outlines are the very precepts that guided such great investors as Warren Buffett, and such mutual fund innovators as John Bogle, the noted Vanguard Group founder, who wrote this edition's foreword. First published in 1949, the text shows a few signs of age, most notably in its discussion of interest rates, investment vehicles such as savings bonds and other time-sensitive subjects. However, those are minor issues. When Benjamin Graham writes about categories of investors, approaches to security analysis, the proper disposition investors should have toward market moves, and other fundamental investment subjects, his advice is timeless. We highly recommend this seminal book.

A good read but some of the opportunities have gone
I thoroughly enjoyed Ben Graham's book. Certainly the concept of buying a share in a company on its underlying value and prediction of growth makes lots of sense. You only have to look back at the dot com boom and bust to recall when we all got carried away acting on share price rather than value. More recently the enormous share prices our banks reached were revealed to be based on sand rather than sound foundations. Some of the concepts for making an accurate valuation of company worth are out of date. For example in Graham's time firms had a lot more tangible assets such premises and plant and machinery and warehouse based inventory that it owned outright with a demonstrable value. Obviously the future value of these could be reasonably appreciated or deprecated over a period of future time and if the company folded these assets could be sold at what ever price the market dictated.

But modern business is not so straightforward. Many firms now hire plant and machinery (if they need or have any at all) and premises are often rented. Many firms rely on just in time processes or drop shippers so we don't have the concept of a fixed stock of finished items that can be valued. Also many organisations have massive debt, which in the event of meltdown will need to be settled long before the humble shareowner gets a look in.

So basic value estimation of many of our large companies rely on asset values that are more difficult to predict (staff knowledge and ability / market contacts) Look at Amazon or ebay, both hugely successful but in terms of hard tangible assets that you could go and kick they have almost nothing. That said, the basic thought process that Ben Graham goes through in his book is as important today as it was 70 or 80 years back. I would suggest that people interested in Warren Buffett and his investment philosophy would enjoy reading this book and get a good understanding of how Warren approaches his investments.

Printing Quality Issue with this Book
This is a warning to potential purchasers of this book from Amazon. Having initially ordered this book from Amazon, when delivered I found that all the pages of the book were roughly torn at the edges - apalling quality control. I sent the book back to Amazon assuming this was simply a one-off quality issue with a single copy of the book, and requested a replacement copy. This duly arrived and again every single page was shredded at the edges. Clearly I sent this back as well and cancelled the complete order. Unfortunately Amazon are not inspecting books before shipping them and there seems to be a serious issue with Amazon's total batch of this book.