Warren Buffett's favorite book, 'The Intelligent Investor,' is still the 'best book about investing' 75 years later
When anyone asks me to recommend one book on investing, the answer is simple: Benjamin Graham’s venerated “The Intelligent Investor.”
The classic written by Graham, the father of financial analysis and value investing, was first published in 1949.
One superstar devotee of Graham is Warren Buffett, who was one of his students at Columbia University. After graduation, Buffett worked for Graham’s company, Graham-Newman Corporation, until Graham retired.
The revised edition has now landed. In the preface, Buffett weighs in: “I read the first edition of this book early in 1950, when I was nineteen. I thought then that it was by far the best book about investing ever written. I still think it is.”
The original text is untouched and features commentary on each chapter from Wall Street Journal writer Jason Zweig, who writes The Intelligent Investor column.
Here’s what Zweig had to say in a conversation with Yahoo Finance. Edited excerpts:
Kerry Hannon: For our readers who don’t know much about Benjamin Graham, can you tell us a little about him?
Jason Zweig: You can make a good case that Graham was one of the most brilliant people of the 20th century. His intelligence, had it ever been measured, would’ve been off the charts.
He was admitted to Columbia when he was 17. He worked a full-time job at night for much of the time that he was in college. He graduated in two-and-a-half years, second in his class. He was offered professorships in three different departments before graduation day. He held two US patents.
He wrote an article in the American Mathematical Society Journal when he was 23, about how people were teaching calculus all wrong. He wrote two books on international trade. He was fluent in ancient Greek and Latin. He could speak and read at least six different languages.
And he was a brilliant writer. We bold-faced quite a bit of his original text in this new edition because I wanted to highlight the best passages in the book and how beautifully written they are — to help people learn from this master.
Even though it’s many years after his death, his words still have incredible power and beauty. And I hope this edition will help people appreciate not just the practicality of the advice, but how magnificently written it is.
Read more: How to start investing: A step-by-step guide
Can you define “intelligent investor” for us?
Benjamin Graham was very clear when he wrote this book what he meant by the word intelligent in the title. He says, “I don’t mean somebody with a high IQ. I don’t mean somebody with a PhD or a master’s in economics or finance. I don’t mean a professional financial analyst or a financial planner or a CPA. All I mean is that you should have good judgment and that it’s much more like being wise than being smart.”
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