The Intelligent Investor

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is a book about investing in securities.. It appeared in 1949, the latest edition with commentary by Jason Zweig is from the year 2003, Warren Buffett, a former student Graham during his teaching at Columbia Business School, once said: " By far the best book ever written about investing has been. "

Value Investing vs. Efficient Market Hypothesis

Content of the book is as with its predecessor, Security Analysis ' of the year 1934 the " Value Investing " ( Engl. about: " Value-Based Investment" ), the Graham -founded along with others. Value Investing is the clear opposite of speculative strategies such as " momentum trading " or " chart analysis ". It contradicts its basic assumptions as clearly of the view that stock prices are efficient. Efficient in this context means that the market as a whole always know all the necessary information about a company and this could therefore always timely pricing in its share prices. Consequence would, therefore, that there could be no mispricing of shares, the price of a stock so would have any time (or at least in most cases ) reflect the fundamental value of a company.

This view contradicted Benjamin Graham vehemently. If the share price of a company at any time reasonable and its true value accordingly so someone could never benefit from the fact that there are from time to time reviews on the market. From the followers Graham is heard today that the success of Warren Buffett, his immense wealth increase just due to the fact that he invested again in undervalued companies, not to be with the efficiency theory explain.

Some representatives of the " efficient market hypothesis " argue, Buffett was an absolute exception. The opposite holds Buffett saying that there were many others who had similar success by they applied the principles of value investing, as Graham once put it. His now famous essay now "The Super Investors of Graham -and- Doddsville " is a difficult rebuttable evidence of the successful implementation of Value Investing by several individuals that go back all the same "father " ( Ben Graham).

Previous versions

Since its first publication in 1949 several new editions of the book published. In 1973 the fourth revised edition came out (ISBN 0-06-015547-7 ), first with an introduction and notes by Warren Buffett. Graham died a short time later, so there was then no substantive changes more. Finally, in 2003 appeared a new edition of this fourth edition with commentary and footnotes by Jason Zweig provided that will primarily produce a current relative to the situation of the market around the turn of the millennium.

German edition

• Non-fiction
• Banking