Originally Posted by joshuat
I absolutely disagree. Intelligent Investor is the intellectual foundation of value investing. Early pc software is not the intellectual foundation of current software practices. Fuzzy logic indeed.
With that nit out of the way, I agree that there are current publications that cover value investing nicely. Buffett himself has moved on from pure Grahamian investing; he has notably been influenced by Fisher and Munger, among others.
I agree and disagree as far as your comment about the hard to apply. This board is filled with people looking for easy solutions - plug a ticker symbol into a spreadsheet, wait for the "3 greens" to buy and sell. I come from the Munger mold - read, read, read. As Graham's writings are the intellectual foundation of what we are now doing, I think it is not just an interesting read, but an absolutely indispensible read. I don't aim to invest like Buffett of the 2000s because I don't have what Buffett has - 60B cash. I do aim to invest like the Buffet of the 60s - someone who can move nimbly. The absolute best way to do that, in my opinion, is to travel the intellectual journey that Buffett himself traveled - read Graham, then read Fisher, then read the Buffett partnership letters, then read some Munger, etc., backed up with the reading of thousands of company reports.
Is any of that easy? No, hence my agreement with you. Is it possible, and even necessary if you want to beat the market (as a value investor)? Yes to both. And that is why we are here on this board, after all. We can match the market by buying a few index funds, read nothing, and sleep easy at night. We are reaching for something more.
Finally, the classic text has been amply annotated to bring it up to date to current market conditions. We aren't likely to find many net-net companies, for example (though they do come around occasionally, they aren't going to be our bread and butter). I can think of no better training for a financial mind than to work through the book, and think about what applies, and what has changed in the market since it has been written.
This book sits on the bookshelf of every serious value investor I have ever heard of. It is widely recommended by the same. "By far the best book on investing ever written." - Warren E. Buffett. Without rudeness, let me suggest that people are better off taking Warren's advise than yours mine.
Now, if you have recommendations for contemporary books with the intellectual rigor and content of The Intelligent Investor, please share, because I am always looking to expand my horizons.
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04-04-2008, 04:04 AM
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