Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham; native tree Benjamin Gross ( born May 9, 1894 in London, † 21 September 1976) was an influential American economist and legendary investor. He is considered the father of fundamental security analysis, which is the basis for the value investing.

Life

Benjamin Graham taught from 1928 to 1957 at Columbia University, where Warren Buffett, William J. Ruane, Irving Kahn, and Charles Brandes were among his students. Graham represented the doctrine that a stock should be bought only by their fundamental value. In order to determine the value of a stock, Graham sat on the fundamental securities analysis and the use of price ratios such as price-earnings ratio (PER ), price to book value ratio ( PBV ), dividend yield and earnings growth.

Graham, who was of Jewish descent, was born in London and moved yearling with his family to New York. His parents changed their name during the First World War in Graham, were regarded as German -sounding name with suspicion. After the death of his father, his single mother lost practically all their belongings in the then American society is widespread speculation and stock trading on credit. Thus, the family lived partly in poor conditions. Despite the precarious economic situation Graham was a model student and exceptional student who completed his studies at Columbia as a vintage runner at the age of 20 years. He received an offer to teach as a teacher in the subjects of English, mathematics and philosophy, but this refused to take a job on Wall Street - an operation that eventually culminated in Graham -Newman Partnership, an early type of modern investment funds.

Around the year 1928 Graham began at Columbia University to teach. Among his former students included many now long legendary investors, including one of the most successful of all time - Warren Buffett.

1934 Graham published the book together with David Dodd Security Analysis, which is still considered as a bible for value investors. In 1949 appeared the first edition still of The Intelligent Investor, a somewhat populärwissenschaftlicheren version of Security Analysis. Buffett called this book once considered the best ever written for investors. It became a bestseller, and was reissued several times, the latest edition was published in 2003 with commentary by Jason Zweig.

Instrumental in Graham was also involved in the development of the " Chartered Financial Analyst ( CFA) " certification, which is to ensure a uniformly high standard in education by securities analysts.