The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)

When I first came across the first edition of this book in my local library in 1959, I was a teenager. Back in those days there were only a handful of books about the stock market. And I've read all of them during my junior high and high school years.

This latest updated 623-page paperback (the index alone is 33 pages) version updated by Jason Zweig is a welcome addition to this classic. The original chapters are intact, but with footnoted comments by Zweig. Moreover, he provides his own commentary on each chapter contents in a separate chapter following each original chapter. He provides extensive research, charts, tables and commentary that updates the book to the present years. He is not afraid to take on the big guns of Wall Street and show how wrong they were in some of their extremely bullish predictions during January-March 2000, when the market was at its peak.

The first nine chapters cover investing basics that all investors could benefit from. There are many truisms spouted on Wall Street that are not really true. These chapters provide the investor with a realistic picture of how Wall Street works and what investors need to do to come out ahead.

Chapters 10-20 focus strictly on fundamental analysis, stock selection, convertible issues and warrants, and other subjects. Investors who plan to invest directly in stocks should make sure to read these chapters. However, for readers more interested in investing in mutual funds, and in particular index funds, they need not concern themselves with all the detail in these chapters unless they have the time or interest in the subject matter presented.

In conclusion, the combination of pioneer Ben Graham?s original work coupled with Zweig?s meticulous and enjoyable update, make this a remarkable book about investments and investor behavior that every new and experienced investor should read. Of the 500 investing books that I?ve read, this one certainly is one of the greats of all time.

This book is light reading compared to Ben Graham's seminal tome, Security Analysis. It's easier to read, and shorter. It's also more up to date. Highly recommended for investors of any stripe, value or growth. The appendix, from Warren Buffett's speech at Columbia University is particularly entertaining, as he debunks academia's love affair with efficient market theory. Jason Zweig, an obvious Graham disciple, does a fantastic job bringing the book's principles to life through modern examples. The only grating thing is his constant derision of brokers or anyone that actually gets paid to manage money. (full disclosure: I'm an analyst now and was a broker for 10 years).

Ben Graham clearly invested in the stock market during a period of hustlers, crooks, crashes, and frauds. Brokers, investment bankers and analysts back then were not much more than fast-talking salesmen. Wait a minute, that sounds just like the way things are today on Wall Street! Things may not have changed as much as we would like to think. Due to his travails as an investor in difficult markets, Ben Graham's investment style evolved into a systematic, logical approach which became the basis for value investing. In "The Intelligent Investor", Graham lays out the foundation of value investing by three introducing key principles: the idea of "Mr. Market", a value-oriented disciplined approach to investing, and the "margin of safety" concept.

"Mr. Market."
The stock market on a daily basis resembles a casino, only without the comfort of free cocktails. Watching the stock ticker is like having a business partner that is totally schizophrenic; Graham calls him "Mr. Market." One day he loves the business and wants to pay a ridiculous price to buy out your half. The next day, all hope is lost, and he wants to sell you his portion for pennies on the dollar. Graham argues that this daily liquidity is an advantage that most investors turn against themselves: (p. 203) "But note this important fact: The true investor scarcely ever is forced to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free to disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all; for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons' mistakes of judgment." This is profound. It's not a question of whether our stocks will drop; they will: the trick is how we respond to that eventuality.

Ben Graham's Stock selection for the defensive investor.
Graham lays out some important characteristics of "value" stocks. (p. 348). Some of the metrics are dated, but the principles are still valid. Even deep value investing today would seem like GARP investing to Ben Graham. Investors are now more focused on future earnings than they were in his day, and valuations reflect that. Graham recommends:
a. Adequate size of the enterprise (>$100M revenue, old figure)
b. Sufficiently strong financial condition (2:1 current ratio)
c. Earnings stability (some earnings every year last 10 years)
d. Dividend record (uninterrupted payments for at least 20 years)
e. Earnings growth (1/3 increase in per share EPS past 10 years)
f. Moderate price/earnings ratio (P/E < 15x average last 3 years EPS)
g. Moderate ratio of price to assets (price/book < 1 1/2 times)
h. Overall stock portfolio, when acquired, should have an overall earnings /price ratio- the reverse of the P/E ratio - at least as high as the current high-grade bond rate. A P/E no higher than 13.3 against an AA bond yield of 7.5%

Margin of Safety as the central concept of value investing.
This is an investment rule that was written by a man who had been deeply bruised by bear markets. I believe he came up with this by learning from his losses. When the market turns into a storm of feces, like it inevitably will, if the stock has no earnings to rely on, you have nothing to grab onto. You can't make yourself stay in the stock when the price is down. Graham says: (p. 515) "The margin of safety is the difference between the percentage rate of the earnings on the stock at the price you pay for it and the rate of interest on bonds, and that is to absorb unsatisfactory developments". Furthermore he writes: (p. 518) "The buyer of bargain issues places particular emphasis on the ability of the investment to withstand adverse developments. " You can and will still lose money in the market with value-oriented investing, but according to Graham: (p. 518) "The margin guarantees only that he has a better chance of profit than for loss-not that loss is impossible."

Conclusion
So that's it, those are the three basic points of the book, but you should still buy it and read it, it's a very enjoyable experience, Shakespeare for the investing crowd. Despite being a realist, Ben Graham wasn't a total pessimist. Late in the book Graham makes a point that is one of my favorites: (p. 524) "A fourth business rule is more positive: "Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it- even though others may hesitate or differ. You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right. Similarly, in the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand. "

Graham's writing is clear, concise and level-headed. He warns against unreasonable financial expectations and proceeds to explain his theories in sufficient detail to be worthwhile, without being over the comprehension of the layman interested in investing.

The book is lengthy and "solid", as opposed to other finance books that hope to explain investment in 100-200 pages. Topics include stocks vs. bonds, inflation, security analysis, and margin of safety (Graham's analysis of the assets of a company in relation to its debt). Zweig's commentary is useful, with footnotes to clarify historical references and, occasionally, demonstrate instances where Graham's predictions proved untrue. At the end of each chapter, Zweig uses recent (up to early 2003) examples of Graham's concepts to make things clearer to modern readers. (Graham's text itself is his 1973 revision to the original 1949 edition.) Also helpful are numerous references to online articles at various sites (I cannot yet vouch for these links' present state.)

Based on my understanding, I highly recommend this edition to anyone interested in this book. I feel that I gleaned more from this annotated edition than I would have from the original, without having to conduct additional research.

I was deciding between getting this edition or the more expensive hardbound edition (which does not contain the Jason Zweig commentaries). I naturally thought, why not go for the cheaper one and get the commentary for free? After all, I could just ignore the commentary if it doesn't help.

Bad bad choice. It was like choosing between a Beethoven CD and the same CD but with free shrieking commentary by a Damon Wayans movie character during and in between each symphony.

Zweig's writing when inserted between Graham's is like the annoying paperclip in MS Office, except there is no way to turn it off. He's in the footnotes (virtually every page!), he's in between every chapter. Open the book at a random page, and most likely you'll open it to a Zweig page.

The content and style of his writing feels condescending and contrasts so much with Graham's. When reading Graham you have elegant timeless prose by a humble, wise man who makes you feel he is sincerely interested in your well-being. By contrast, Zweig feels like someone who wants to impress you with his word plays, and puns. He really should have attempted to recede into the background and limited his voice.

I would recommend everyone to just buy the hardcover edition.

Buy Graham only. If you cannot read Graham, Zweig will only help marginally, and you still need to verify his comments against other contemporary Graham commentators. Get another book. If you *can* read Graham, then you do not need the commentaries in this book. Any questions you may have can be answered in thousands of sites on the net.

This is the 4th edition of Benjamin Graham's landmark book for the investing public, called "The Intelligent Investor." However, it's been "updated" for 2003 by Jason Zweig, a senior editor and writer at CNN/Money, and overall I think this detracts from, rather than improves, the book. I rate Graham's book 5 stars and Zweig's contributions get 3 stars: overall, 4 stars.

First off, there are 3 contributors to this book: Buffett, Graham and Zweig. Warren Buffett, the superinvestor who heads Berkshire Hathaway, is frequently pointed out as one of the world's great investors/stock pickers and also as Ben Graham's star student. Buffett's preface to this book consists of 2 pages: a biographical essay he wrote about Graham in 1976, saying nice things about Graham's personal qualities; and a recommendation to pay particular attention to Chapters 8 and 20. (Buffett, incidentally, cannot be honestly said to have been influenced by this book; his bible was Graham's landmark 1940 textbook for the professional security analyst, called "Security Analysis.") So Buffettologists should know that there will be little to interest them here.

Graham's text is level-headed and sane, and makes for wonderful reading. His distinction between speculators and investors, his way of viewing the markets, and his methodical approach to considering the inherent value of investments is required reading. In my opinion, any non-professional who's interested in investing money could benefit from reading it. Enough said about that.

However, Graham's book makes up only about 1/3 of the present volume. The format is the following: Graham writes a 6 page chapter; Zweig pads that chapter out to 8 pages with giant footnotes; and then Zweig appends a 10-15 page "commentary" to each chapter. Now who exactly is Jason Zweig? I'd never heard of him. His qualifications are very different from Graham's and Buffett's; he is a writer for CNN/Money magazine. I don't consider him to be an investment professional.

Unfortunately, this shows in his writing. Whereas Graham's text is even-handed, methodical, and rational, Zweig comes across as hysterical, emotional, and shrill. His annoying habit of flinging superlatives around (he frequently mentions Buffett as "the greatest investor of all time", and calls Graham the "greatest practical investment thinker of all time") is annoying and adds little to understanding. But much worse is his incessant habit of putting words into Graham's mouth. About 3 or 4 chapters in I began to chafe at this. "Who is this Jason Zweig exactly," I thought, "and how exactly does he claim to know how Graham would have analyzed the tech bubble of 1999-2000?"

As I started paying closer attention, I began to feel that Zweig was making comments - under the guise of "updating" Graham's ideas - that Graham himself would never have endorsed. This bothered me. I feel that, in a way, I was baited with Graham's name into buying a book by Jason Zweig, and it's not the book I thought I was buying.

To be fair, Zweig's commentary is often interesting. His commentary on Chapter 12 has nothing to do with Graham's chapter (on analyzing per-share earnings) at all; rather, it is a scathing, well-presented, easily understood, and fairly detailed analysis of certain examples of accounting irregularities that contributed to the tech blowup and led to Sarbanes-Oxley. (I wouldn't be surprised to learn Zweig had written a book of his own about this topic; if so, I may buy it.) But this only further strengthens the feeling, present always, that Zweig is less interested in explaining Graham's text and more interested in pushing his own agenda and ways of investment thinking. Now for the casual reader who enjoys CNN/Money's style and format as their principal source of investment advice, they may truly enjoy and benefit from this. But I wanted to read Graham's historical text as a whole and interpret it myself; Zweig's constant, harping interpolations severely detracted from my ability to do this.

Finally, there is little in the first 10 chapters of this book that has not become near-dogma for the conservative, value-oriented small investor, repeated ad nauseam in the pages of Money, Forbes, the Motley Fool, and elsewhere. The meat of the book is in the last half, where Graham touches - lightly - on issues that the conservative investor may be interested in valuing, and how to do it right. Frankly I was expecting him to go into more depth on these topics, and I will probably be picking up a copy of either The Interpretation of Financial Statements or Security Analysis (the 1940 edition seems to be the consensus pick) to learn more about his thoughts on these matters.