The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed: The Definitive Book on Value Investing
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About this ebook
“By far the best book on investing ever written.” — Warren Buffett
The classic text of Benjamin Graham’s seminal The Intelligent Investor has now been revised and annotated to update the timeless wisdom for today’s market conditions.
The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham, taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing"—which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies—has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949.
Over the years, market developments have proven the wisdom of Graham's strategies. While preserving the integrity of Graham's original text, this revised edition includes updated commentary by noted financial journalist Jason Zweig, whose perspective incorporates the realities of today's market, draws parallels between Graham's examples and today's financial headlines, and gives readers a more thorough understanding of how to apply Graham's principles.
Vital and indispensable, this revised edition of The Intelligent Investor is the most important book you will ever read on how to reach your financial goals.
Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham (1894–1976), the father of financial analysis and value investing, has been an inspiration for generations of the world’s most successful businesspeople. He was also the author of Security Analysis and The Interpretation of Financial Statements.
Read more from Benjamin Graham
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Reviews for The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed
762 ratings32 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title to be a valuable guide for understanding the world of investing. It provides clear and informative advice on topics such as value investing, stock market, and business management. The book is highly recommended for beginners and those looking to start their investing journey. While some readers found it to be a bit challenging to finish, they still appreciated the countless useful insights it offers. Overall, this book is considered one of the best resources on value investing and a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I did not actually read it on here. I have a hard copy. To me this is the end all be all of investing. This is the book at the intersection of everything you want to learn about the world of investing and he created the term Mr. Market which is still in use 75 years after this book was originally published. I have read well over 100 books on investing and this is the best one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good guide to understand mf world good reference to read more
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Best book on Value Investing,I think I learn most of things about Stock and share market from this book. So Thank you very much
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5excelent book, is worth to read. Investment vs expeculation are different thing and both are clearly explain.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Its really great to listen to. It has countless uselfull insights. However man it's hard to finish. The man reading it has the same tone the entire time. Just take lots of breaks so you dont fall alseep. But all in all good book
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very informative and helpful relative to Business management and entrepreneurship ideas.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Intelligent Investor serves as a foundation for anyone interested in learning about investing. It is dated but there are universal concepts that remain true today. The revision brings some needed updates with great discussion on the dot com bubble. What I gained from reading this is investor behavior has not changed and there are many speculators in the market. In the current bull market, there is a optimism in companies that Graham would not find financially sound. Many people are seeking the next Amazon or Facebook. The important takeaway is timing the market is less important than finding companies that represent good value with potential growth. This book is not designed to tell the reader what exact stock to buy but instead give perspective on a healthy view on investing.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5its an amazing book worth reading
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5fantastic really really loved it and great start to my investing journey I now feel ready for
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Valuable advice for investing and life - don’t speculate, and long-term profit depends on the price you pay at the beginning. Strangely, I read the book to learn about value investing but it actually makes a strong case for index investing.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A book on investing that every investor should have read. The principles that Benjamin Graham outlines are the very precepts that guided many great investors. Although the book was first published in 1949, and is still very relevant for today's markets. When Benjamin Graham writes about categories of investors, approaches to security analysis, the proper disposition investors should have toward market moves, and other fundamental investment subjects, his advice is timeless. This is a "must-read" even if you are an investor who bases their strategy on technical analysis. Every investor must have a fundamental understanding of how markets interact, and although this book is not easy to read, and takes some discipline to complete, it is time well spent. This book is highly recommended for everyone interested in investing in today's markets.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Topics
- Investment vs. Speculation
- Defensive Investment vs. Enterprising Investment
- Decent return for the Defensive: 4%
- Decent return for the Enterprising: 8%
- Investors are owners
- Margin of safety
Reception
A lot of the talking points in this book could easily be given at a talk on Slow Money [the alternative or new economy movement]. And yet what's so striking is that this book is also supposed to be the foundation of modern investment. How could this be, as the two are supposed to be opposites?
Well, most mainstream "investment" is actually speculation. And most Slow Money isn't that radical, but this is changing.
The book lays out two divergent strategies. The first is for the normal "defensive" investor. This strategy is largely passive, and focuses only on minimizing loss; impressive return is ignored.
The second is that of the "enterprising" and aggressive or full-time investor. Here the emphasis is still on minimizing exposure, but returns are expanded by heavily researching all possible pathways.
What's most interesting is not how the concepts of this book apply to investing, but how they apply to life. One of the key points is that, no matter how careful our calculations, some part of every decision is left to chance, and there's no way to eliminate this. So our best option is to align ourselves with those factors of which we will always be ignorant.
Much of the book is about dividends. Apparently they were the primary source of return back then. But it's gotten me thinking: how is it a good deal for a company to perpetually pay investors through dividends? Why not just pay them off? Dividends are essentially just debt service.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wow. So many books. I have a lot of reading to do... If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A penny saved is a penny earned ... and if invested for 20 years, compounded daily at an average of 6% you'll have $.03 more in your retirement fun ...
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I was working with Hublot brand in Dubai. One day i was going through a blog i saw a post concerning MONEY TRANSFER SERVICE and I contacted them and when i bumped into their site { https://www.hackfunding.su } while surfing the net at my leisure time at work. I started with $450 payment for $4,000 transfer which is 14,692 AED due to the money is small and i could readily forget about it if it doesn’t work out. I receive my transfer same day and so i started ordering for higher amounts which i can now say i’m presently a VIP member. I have never seen such great service online in my life. God used them to change my life for good and now I am opportune to have a Hublot franchise in Dubai worth millions of USD. Overall It was pleasure to work with World’s Best hacking team, they are very professional and courteous. I will certainly recommend them to few of my friends. { https://www.hackfunding.su }
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read it for the 2nd time - the first time I quit it after 100 pages.
Once you are done with this wonderful book on investing, you'll learn that most other literature in the field of value investing seems mimicking what the master has said decades ago.
If you are not from the finance background, initially the book may seem boring or esoteric - as was the case with me. But once you begin to pick up investment basics I'm sure the book will be priceless.
Still I can't claim that I've understood it completely, but then that's why I'll read it for 3rd time, or maybe 100 more times.
I recommend this book for everyone.3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5thanks for sharing , if anyone interested about stocks investments fell free to check out our site here https://www.amcstocks.com/
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A penny saved is a penny earned ... and if invested for 20 years, compounded daily at an average of 6% you'll have $.03 more in your retirement fun ...
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I see why this book is so popular and well-respected. However, out of the 20 chapters, there are only 6-8 chapters that I couldn't "must reads." If you want to read about investing, definitely add this to your list, but I recommend that you go to Investopedia to look up some of the terms and concepts. This is a heavy read, so don't rush through it.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Benjamin GrahamThe father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, wrote a powerful and insight book that has changed the way individuals invest their money. The basic premise in value investing is not to look for the quick changing high payout stocks but rather to focus on long-term investment strategies. This same strategy is the one used by Warren Buffett and look where he, and Berkshire Hathaway clients, is today.I thought about dabbling in the world of the stock market and thought I needed more education before I sunk my teeth into this world. Enter Benjamin Graham and The Intelligent Investor. This book opened my eyes to a new and valuable understanding of the stock market. It also introduced me to how people can make substantial amounts of money investing correctly. Armed with the right information, any new investor can succeed in the markets.Graham’s book covers a variety of topics including investment versus speculator; inflation and the investor; the defensive investor; the enterprising investor; market fluctuations; investment funds; and a whole lot of comparisons and valuable information. Nearly 600 pages of valuable information that any stock investor should be aware of.This books information is dated as it was published in 2003 but the premise is a sound today as it was in 1949 when Graham first published this work. Numerous famous companies provide examples throughout the book to give real world analysis of value investing strategies. Companies like ALCOA, Coca-cola, General Motors, IBM, McGraw-Hill, Penn Central Railroad, Sears Roebuck, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Wal-mart and Yahoo.I never did invest money into the stock market directly; I decided to go a safer route through mutual funds. There is something inherently risky about the stock market, which did not suit my investment purposes. That is not to say that mutual funds are risk free because they are not. To me, mutual funds are a safer investment vehicle because they rely not on a single stock but rather many different stocks to make up the portfolio.Anybody interested in value investing should read this book. In fact, I would suggest that anybody contemplating investing any money in any investment vehicle should read this before they invest. I know I am happy to have read this book before making any investments.Happy Reading,
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Superb
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Intelligent Investor, in its last edition by Benjamin Graham, is a book whose acquaintance would have benefited me greatly had I come across it as a young man back when it was published in 1973. As much a psychological guide to market investing as a technical one, Mr. Graham provides wise and emphatic counsel on when you should be excited to invest (not when euphoric markets reign) and the investments one should seek (not the hottest ones exciting everyone most). He demonstrates how to evaluate companies in order to become the defensive investor he believes most of us should be, with good advice for “enterprising” investors too. It’s a clarifying vision. And helpfully, this vintage volume was updated by Jason Zweig in 2003 with interesting footnotes and commentaries.The Intelligent Investor also calls our attention to the pitfalls of uncritical belief and the vigilance necessary to avoid them. As an example, he acquaints us with the accounting malpractice employed by some business concerns, something investors can’t afford to ignore. Jason Zweig injects passion into the text when discussing dividends and stock buybacks, aiming scorching words at corporate chiefs who devalue the former practice and too often celebrate the latter.Direct, intelligent, and even at times entertaining, The Intelligent Investor is a valuable aid for most anyone wishing to learn how to think over, with composure, the issues involved in making better investment decisions.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Only read the preview. But from what I read, I think this is quite good. My only wish is that I invested in Instagram.com !
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The base advice is timeless, though the examples he uses, mostly from the 1940s through early 1970s, are dated. Luckily, Jason Zweig's useful commentary follows each chapter, summarizes the material, provides newer examples, from the late 1990s/early 2000s, and let's the reader know when changes in the industry have made one of Graham's points less relevant. It is a combination that works well. Younger readers, however, might find discussions of Enron and Global Crossing just as opaque as Graham's discussion of railroad bonds, and wish that there was an even newer revision.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Way overrated and out of date. There are some investment principles that would not change over time, but those covered in the book appear to be too elementary for any professionals.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5i read from unknown source it was best for beginners
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An exceptional book about value investing. Written over 60 years ago, the advice given is still great today. Zweig's commentary is the best part, as it gives relevance and essential updates to the often dated examples. The book is also a great book for the philosophy of investing, setting very realistic goals. Overall I felt that it was a truthful book and has the backing of unmatched investors. Be warned, it's also a very long read, but broken up well into chapters.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantastically helpful book if you're interested in investing in individual stocks. Well written and interesting, but not a breezy beach read by any stretch of the imagination. Zweig's introduction is well worth reading, too.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the bible of value investing for the average man. Graham may not be known to many but his protégé Warren Buffet is.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I love reading this book.
i highly recommend it to all.
Book preview
The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed - Benjamin Graham
The Intelligent Investor
A Book of Practical Counsel
Revised Edition
Benjamin Graham
Updated with New Commentary by Jason Zweig
To E.M.G.
Through chances various, through all
vicissitudes, we make our way….
Aeneid
Contents
Epigraph
Preface to the Fourth Edition, by Warren E. Buffett
A Note About Benjamin Graham, by Jason Zweig
Introduction: What This Book Expects to Accomplish
Commentary on the Introduction
1. Investment versus Speculation: Results to Be Expected by the Intelligent Investor
Commentary on Chapter 1
2. The Investor and Inflation
Commentary on Chapter 2
3. A Century of Stock-Market History: The Level of Stock Prices in Early 1972
Commentary on Chapter 3
4. General Portfolio Policy: The Defensive Investor
Commentary on Chapter 4
5. The Defensive Investor and Common Stocks
Commentary on Chapter 5
6. Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor: Negative Approach
Commentary on Chapter 6
7. Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor: The Positive Side
Commentary on Chapter 7
8. The Investor and Market Fluctuations
Commentary on Chapter 8
9. Investing in Investment Funds
Commentary on Chapter 9
10. The Investor and His Advisers
Commentary on Chapter 10
11. Security Analysis for the Lay Investor: General Approach
Commentary on Chapter 11
12. Things to Consider About Per-Share Earnings
Commentary on Chapter 12
13. A Comparison of Four Listed Companies
Commentary on Chapter 13
14. Stock Selection for the Defensive Investor
Commentary on Chapter 14
15. Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor
Commentary on Chapter 15
16. Convertible Issues and Warrants
Commentary on Chapter 16
17. Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories
Commentary on Chapter 17
18. A Comparison of Eight Pairs of Companies
Commentary on Chapter 18
19. Shareholders and Managements: Dividend Policy
Commentary on Chapter 19
20. Margin of Safety
as the Central Concept of Investment
Commentary on Chapter 20
Postscript
Commentary on Postscript
Appendixes
1. The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville
2. Important Rules Concerning Taxability of Investment Income and Security Transactions (in 1972)
3. The Basics of Investment Taxation (Updated as of 2003)
4. The New Speculation in Common Stocks
5. A Case History: Aetna Maintenance Co.
6. Tax Accounting for NVF’s Acquisition of Sharon Steel Shares
7. Technological Companies as Investments
Endnotes
Acknowledgments from Jason Zweig
Index
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
The text reproduced here is the Fourth Revised Edition, updated by Graham in 1971-1972 and initially published in 1973. The numbered chapter notes are original to Graham—bolded text in these notes is by Jason Zweig.
Jason Zweig’s new notes within Graham’s chapters are designated by an asterisk or a cross.
Preface to the Fourth Edition,
by Warren E. Buffett
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.
To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must supply the emotional discipline.
If you follow the behavioral and business principles that Graham advocates—and if you pay special attention to the invaluable advice in Chapters 8 and 20—you will not get a poor result from your investments. (That represents more of an accomplishment than you might think.) Whether you achieve outstanding results will depend on the effort and intellect you apply to your investments, as well as on the amplitudes of stock-market folly that prevail during your investing career. The sillier the market’s behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business-like investor. Follow Graham and you will profit from folly rather than participate in it.
To me, Ben Graham was far more than an author or a teacher. More than any other man except my father, he influenced my life. Shortly after Ben’s death in 1976, I wrote the following short remembrance about him in the Financial Analysts Journal. As you read the book, I believe you’ll perceive some of the qualities I mentioned in this tribute.
Benjamin Graham
1894–1976
Several years ago Ben Graham, then almost eighty, expressed to a friend the thought that he hoped every day to do something foolish, something creative and something generous.
The inclusion of that first whimsical goal reflected his knack for packaging ideas in a form that avoided any overtones of sermonizing or self-importance. Although his ideas were powerful, their delivery was unfailingly gentle.
Readers of this magazine need no elaboration of his achievements as measured by the standard of creativity. It is rare that the founder of a discipline does not find his work eclipsed in rather short order by successors. But over forty years after publication of the book that brought structure and logic to a disorderly and confused activity, it is difficult to think of possible candidates for even the runner-up position in the field of security analysis. In an area where much looks foolish within weeks or months after publication, Ben’s principles have remained sound—their value often enhanced and better understood in the wake of financial storms that demolished flimsier intellectual structures. His counsel of soundness brought unfailing rewards to his followers—even to those with natural abilities inferior to more gifted practitioners who stumbled while following counsels of brilliance or fashion.
A remarkable aspect of Ben’s dominance of his professional field was that he achieved it without that narrowness of mental activity that concentrates all effort on a single end. It was, rather, the incidental by-product of an intellect whose breadth almost exceeded definition. Certainly I have never met anyone with a mind of similar scope. Virtually total recall, unending fascination with new knowledge, and an ability to recast it in a form applicable to seemingly unrelated problems made exposure to his thinking in any field a delight.
But his third imperative—generosity—was where he succeeded beyond all others. I knew Ben as my teacher, my employer, and my friend. In each relationship—just as with all his students, employees, and friends—there was an absolutely open-ended, no-scores-kept generosity of ideas, time, and spirit. If clarity of thinking was required, there was no better place to go. And if encouragement or counsel was needed, Ben was there.
Walter Lippmann spoke of men who plant trees that other men will sit under. Ben Graham was such a man.
Reprinted from the Financial Analysts Journal, November/December 1976.
A Note About Benjamin Graham by Jason Zweig
Who was Benjamin Graham, and why should you listen to him?
Graham was not only one of the best investors who ever lived; he was also the greatest practical investment thinker of all time. Before Graham, money managers behaved much like a medieval guild, guided largely by superstition, guesswork, and arcane rituals. Graham’s Security Analysis was the textbook that transformed this musty circle into a modern profession. ¹
And The Intelligent Investor is the first book ever to describe, for individual investors, the emotional framework and analytical tools that are essential to financial success. It remains the single best book on investing ever written for the general public. The Intelligent Investor was the first book I read when I joined Forbes Magazine as a cub reporter in 1987, and I was struck by Graham’s certainty that, sooner or later, all bull markets must end badly. That October, U.S. stocks suffered their worst one-day crash in history, and I was hooked. (Today, after the wild bull market of the late 1990s and the brutal bear market that began in early 2000, The Intelligent Investor reads more prophetically than ever.)
Graham came by his insights the hard way: by feeling firsthand the anguish of financial loss and by studying for decades the history and psychology of the markets. He was born Benjamin Grossbaum on May 9, 1894, in London; his father was a dealer in china dishes and figurines.² The family moved to New York when Ben was a year old. At first they lived the good life—with a maid, a cook, and a French governess—on upper Fifth Avenue. But Ben’s father died in 1903, the porcelain business faltered, and the family slid haltingly into poverty. Ben’s mother turned their home into a boardinghouse; then, borrowing money to trade stocks on margin,
she was wiped out in the crash of 1907. For the rest of his life, Ben would recall the humiliation of cashing a check for his mother and hearing the bank teller ask, Is Dorothy Grossbaum good for five dollars?
Fortunately, Graham won a scholarship at Columbia, where his brilliance burst into full flower. He graduated in 1914, second in his class. Before the end of Graham’s final semester, three departments—English, philosophy, and mathematics—asked him to join the faculty. He was all of 20 years old.
Instead of academia, Graham decided to give Wall Street a shot. He started as a clerk at a bond-trading firm, soon became an analyst, then a partner, and before long was running his own investment partnership.
The Internet boom and bust would not have surprised Graham. In April 1919, he earned a 250% return on the first day of trading for Savold Tire, a new offering in the booming automotive business; by October, the company had been exposed as a fraud and the stock was worthless.
Graham became a master at researching stocks in microscopic, almost molecular, detail. In 1925, plowing through the obscure reports filed by oil pipelines with the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission, he learned that Northern Pipe Line Co.—then trading at $65 per share—held at least $80 per share in high-quality bonds. (He bought the stock, pestered its managers into raising the dividend, and came away with $110 per share three years later.)
Despite a harrowing loss of nearly 70% during the Great Crash of 1929–1932, Graham survived and thrived in its aftermath, harvesting bargains from the wreckage of the bull market. There is no exact record of Graham’s earliest returns, but from 1936 until he retired in 1956, his Graham-Newman Corp. gained at least 14.7% annually, versus 12.2% for the stock market as a whole—one of the best long-term track records on Wall Street history.³
How did Graham do it? Combining his extraordinary intellectual powers with profound common sense and vast experience, Graham developed his core principles, which are at least as valid today as they were during his lifetime:
A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.
The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
The future value of every investment is a function of its present price. The higher the price you pay, the lower your return will be.
No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the margin of safety
—never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be—can you minimize your odds of error.
The secret to your financial success is inside yourself. If you become a critical thinker who takes no Wall Street fact
on faith, and you invest with patient confidence, you can take steady advantage of even the worst bear markets. By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.
The goal of this revised edition of The Intelligent Investor is to apply Graham’s ideas to today’s financial markets while leaving his text entirely intact (with the exception of footnotes for clarification).⁴ After each of Graham’s chapters you’ll find a new commentary. In these reader’s guides, I’ve added recent examples that should show you just how relevant—and how liberating—Graham’s principles remain today.
I envy you the excitement and enlightenment of reading Graham’s masterpiece for the first time—or even the third or fourth time. Like all classics, it alters how we view the world and renews itself by educating us. And the more you read it, the better it gets. With Graham as your guide, you are guaranteed to become a vastly more intelligent investor.
Introduction:
What This Book Expects to Accomplish
The purpose of this book is to supply, in a form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy. Comparatively little will be said here about the technique of analyzing securities; attention will be paid chiefly to investment principles and investors’ attitudes. We shall, however, provide a number of condensed comparisons of specific securities—chiefly in pairs appearing side by side in the New York Stock Exchange list—in order to bring home in concrete fashion the important elements involved in specific choices of common stocks.
But much of our space will be devoted to the historical patterns of financial markets, in some cases running back over many decades. To invest intelligently in securities one should be forearmed with an adequate knowledge of how the various types of bonds and stocks have actually behaved under varying conditions—some of which, at least, one is likely to meet again in one’s own experience. No statement is more true and better applicable to Wall Street than the famous warning of Santayana: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Our text is directed to investors as distinguished from speculators, and our first task will be to clarify and emphasize this now all but forgotten distinction. We may say at the outset that this is not a how to make a million
book. There are no sure and easy paths to riches on Wall Street or anywhere else. It may be well to point up what we have just said by a bit of financial history—especially since there is more than one moral to be drawn from it. In the climactic year 1929 John J. Raskob, a most important figure nationally as well as on Wall Street, extolled the blessings of capitalism in an article in the Ladies’ Home Journal, entitled Everybody Ought to Be Rich.
* His thesis was that savings of only $15 per month invested in good common stocks—with dividends reinvested—would produce an estate of $80,000 in twenty years against total contributions of only $3,600. If the General Motors tycoon was right, this was indeed a simple road to riches. How nearly right was he? Our rough calculation—based on assumed investment in the 30 stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)—indicates that if Raskob’s prescription had been followed during 1929–1948, the investor’s holdings at the beginning of 1949 would have been worth about $8,500. This is a far cry from the great man’s promise of $80,000, and it shows how little reliance can be placed on such optimistic forecasts and assurances. But, as an aside, we should remark that the return actually realized by the 20-year operation would have been better than 8% compounded annually—and this despite the fact that the investor would have begun his purchases with the DJIA at 300 and ended with a valuation based on the 1948 closing level of 177. This record may be regarded as a persuasive argument for the principle of regular monthly purchases of strong common stocks through thick and thin—a program known as dollar-cost averaging.
Since our book is not addressed to speculators, it is not meant for those who trade in the market. Most of these people are guided by charts or other largely mechanical means of determining the right moments to buy and sell. The one principle that applies to nearly all these so-called technical approaches
is that one should buy because a stock or the market has gone up and one should sell because it has declined. This is the exact opposite of sound business sense everywhere else, and it is most unlikely that it can lead to lasting success on Wall Street. In our own stock-market experience and observation, extending over 50 years, we have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly made money by thus following the market.
We do not hesitate to declare that this approach is as fallacious as it is popular. We shall illustrate what we have just said—though, of course this should not be taken as proof—by a later brief discussion of the famous Dow theory for trading in the stock market.*
Since its first publication in 1949, revisions of The Intelligent Investor have appeared at intervals of approximately five years. In updating the current version we shall have to deal with quite a number of new developments since the 1965 edition was written. These include:
An unprecedented advance in the interest rate on high-grade bonds.
A fall of about 35% in the price level of leading common stocks, ending in May 1970. This was the highest percentage decline in some 30 years. (Countless issues of lower quality had a much larger shrinkage.)
A persistent inflation of wholesale and consumer’s prices, which gained momentum even in the face of a decline of general business in 1970.
The rapid development of conglomerate
companies, franchise operations, and other relative novelties in business and finance. (These include a number of tricky devices such as letter stock,
¹ proliferation of stock-option warrants, misleading names, use of foreign banks, and others.)†
Bankruptcy of our largest railroad, excessive short- and long-term debt of many formerly strongly entrenched companies, and even a disturbing problem of solvency among Wall Street houses.*
The advent of the performance
vogue in the management of investment funds, including some bank-operated trust funds, with disquieting results.
These phenomena will have our careful consideration, and some will require changes in conclusions and emphasis from our previous edition. The underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.
The last statement was put to the test during the writing of the present edition, the first draft of which was finished in January 1971. At that time the DJIA was in a strong recovery from its 1970 low of 632 and was advancing toward a 1971 high of 951, with attendant general optimism. As the last draft was finished, in November 1971, the market was in the throes of a new decline, carrying it down to 797 with a renewed general uneasiness about its future. We have not allowed these fluctuations to affect our general attitude toward sound investment policy, which remains substantially unchanged since the first edition of this book in 1949.
The extent of the market’s shrinkage in 1969–70 should have served to dispel an illusion that had been gaining ground during the past two decades. This was that leading common stocks could be bought at any time and at any price, with the assurance not only of ultimate profit but also that any intervening loss would soon be recouped by a renewed advance of the market to new high levels. That was too good to be true. At long last the stock market has returned to normal,
in the sense that both speculators and stock investors must again be prepared to experience significant and perhaps protracted falls as well as rises in the value of their holdings.
In the area of many secondary and third-line common stocks, especially recently floated enterprises, the havoc wrought by the last market break was catastrophic. This was nothing new in itself—it had happened to a similar degree in 1961–62—but there was now a novel element in the fact that some of the investment funds had large commitments in highly speculative and obviously overvalued issues of this type. Evidently it is not only the tyro who needs to be warned that while enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.
The major question we shall have to deal with grows out of the huge rise in the rate of interest on first-quality bonds. Since late 1967 the investor has been able to obtain more than twice as much income from such bonds as he could from dividends on representative common stocks. At the beginning of 1972 the return was 7.19% on highest-grade bonds versus only 2.76% on industrial stocks. (This compares with 4.40% and 2.92% respectively at the end of 1964.) It is hard to realize that when we first wrote this book in 1949 the figures were almost the exact opposite: the bonds returned only 2.66% and the stocks yielded 6.82%.² In previous editions we have consistently urged that at least 25% of the conservative investor’s portfolio be held in common stocks, and we have favored in general a 50–50 division between the two media. We must now consider whether the current great advantage of bond yields over stock yields would justify an all-bond policy until a more sensible relationship returns, as we expect it will. Naturally the question of continued inflation will be of great importance in reaching our decision here. A chapter will be devoted to this discussion.*
In the past we have made a basic distinction between two kinds of investors to whom this book was addressed—the defensive
and the enterprising.
The defensive (or passive) investor will place his chief emphasis on the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses. His second aim will be freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions. The determining trait of the enterprising (or active, or aggressive) investor is his willingness to devote time and care to the selection of securities that are both sound and more attractive than the average. Over many decades an enterprising investor of this sort could expect a worthwhile reward for his extra skill and effort, in the form of a better average return than that realized by the passive investor. We have some doubt whether a really substantial extra recompense is promised to the active investor under today’s conditions. But next year or the years after may well be different. We shall accordingly continue to devote attention to the possibilities for enterprising investment, as they existed in former periods and may return.
It has long been the prevalent view that the art of successful investment lies first in the choice of those industries that are most likely to grow in the future and then in identifying the most promising companies in these industries. For example, smart investors—or their smart advisers—would long ago have recognized the great growth possibilities of the computer industry as a whole and of International Business Machines in particular. And similarly for a number of other growth industries and growth companies. But this is not as easy as it always looks in retrospect. To bring this point home at the outset let us add here a paragraph that we included first in the 1949 edition of this book.
Such an investor may for example be a buyer of air-transport stocks because he believes their future is even more brilliant than the trend the market already reflects. For this class of investor the value of our book will lie more in its warnings against the pitfalls lurking in this favorite investment approach than in any positive technique that will help him along his path.*
The pitfalls have proved particularly dangerous in the industry we mentioned. It was, of course, easy to forecast that the volume of air traffic would grow spectacularly over the years. Because of this factor their shares became a favorite choice of the investment funds. But despite the expansion of revenues—at a pace even greater than in the computer industry—a combination of technological problems and overexpansion of capacity made for fluctuating and even disastrous profit figures. In the year 1970, despite a new high in traffic figures, the airlines sustained a loss of some $200 million for their shareholders. (They had shown losses also in 1945 and 1961.) The stocks of these companies once again showed a greater decline in 1969–70 than did the general market. The record shows that even the highly paid full-time experts of the mutual funds were completely wrong about the fairly short-term future of a major and nonesoteric industry.
On the other hand, while the investment funds had substantial investments and substantial gains in IBM, the combination of its apparently high price and the impossibility of being certain about its rate of growth prevented them from having more than, say, 3% of their funds in this wonderful performer. Hence the effect of this excellent choice on their overall results was by no means decisive. Furthermore, many—if not most—of their investments in computer-industry companies other than IBM appear to have been unprofitable. From these two broad examples we draw two morals for our readers:
Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not translate into obvious profits for investors.
The experts do not have dependable ways of selecting and concentrating on the most promising companies in the most promising industries.
The author did not follow this approach in his financial career as fund manager, and he cannot offer either specific counsel or much encouragement to those who may wish to try it.
What then will we aim to accomplish in this book? Our main objective will be to guide the reader against the areas of possible substantial error and to develop policies with which he will be comfortable. We shall say quite a bit about the psychology of investors. For indeed, the investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself. (The fault, dear investor, is not in our stars—and not in our stocks—but in ourselves….
) This has proved the more true over recent decades as it has become more necessary for conservative investors to acquire common stocks and thus to expose themselves, willy-nilly, to the excitement and the temptations of the stock market. By arguments, examples, and exhortation, we hope to aid our readers to establish the proper mental and emotional attitudes toward their investment decisions. We have seen much more money made and kept by ordinary people
who were temperamentally well suited for the investment process than by those who lacked this quality, even though they had an extensive knowledge of finance, accounting, and stock-market lore.
Additionally, we hope to implant in the reader a tendency to measure or quantify. For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some other price they would be so dear that they should be sold. The habit of relating what is paid to what is being offered is an invaluable trait in investment. In an article in a women’s magazine many years ago we advised the readers to buy their stocks as they bought their groceries, not as they bought their perfume. The really dreadful losses of the past few years (and on many similar occasions before) were realized in those common-stock issues where the buyer forgot to ask How much?
In June 1970 the question How much?
could be answered by the magic figure 9.40%—the yield obtainable on new offerings of high-grade public-utility bonds. This has now dropped to about 7.3%, but even that return tempts us to ask, Why give any other answer?
But there are other possible answers, and these must be carefully considered. Besides which, we repeat that both we and our readers must be prepared in advance for the possibly quite different conditions of, say, 1973–1977.
We shall therefore present in some detail a positive program for common-stock investment, part of which is within the purview of both classes of investors and part is intended mainly for the enterprising group. Strangely enough, we shall suggest as one of our chief requirements here that our readers limit themselves to issues selling not far above their tangible-asset value.* The reason for this seemingly outmoded counsel is both practical and psychological. Experience has taught us that, while there are many good growth companies worth several times net assets, the buyer of such shares will be too dependent on the vagaries and fluctuations of the stock market. By contrast, the investor in shares, say, of public-utility companies at about their net-asset value can always consider himself the owner of an interest in sound and expanding businesses, acquired at a rational price—regardless of what the stock market might say to the contrary. The ultimate result of such a conservative policy is likely to work out better than exciting adventures into the glamorous and dangerous fields of anticipated growth.
The art of investment has one characteristic that is not generally appreciated. A creditable, if unspectacular, result can be achieved by the lay investor with a minimum of effort and capability; but to improve this easily attainable standard requires much application and more than a trace of wisdom. If you merely try to bring just a little extra knowledge and cleverness to bear upon your investment program, instead of realizing a little better than normal results, you may well find that you have done worse.
Since anyone—by just buying and holding a representative list—can equal the performance of the market averages, it would seem a comparatively simple matter to beat the averages
; but as a matter of fact the proportion of smart people who try this and fail is surprisingly large. Even the majority of the investment funds, with all their experienced personnel, have not performed so well over the years as has the general market. Allied to the foregoing is the record of the published stock-market predictions of the brokerage houses, for there is strong evidence that their calculated forecasts have been somewhat less reliable than the simple tossing of a coin.
In writing this book we have tried to keep this basic pitfall of investment in mind. The virtues of a simple portfolio policy have been emphasized—the purchase of high-grade bonds plus a diversified list of leading common stocks—which any investor can carry out with a little expert assistance. The adventure beyond this safe and sound territory has been presented as fraught with challenging difficulties, especially in the area of temperament. Before attempting such a venture the investor should feel sure of himself and of his advisers—particularly as to whether they have a clear concept of the differences between investment and speculation and between market price and underlying value.
A strong-minded approach to investment, firmly based on the margin-of-safety principle, can yield handsome rewards. But a decision to try for these emoluments rather than for the assured fruits of defensive investment should not be made without much self-examination.
A final retrospective thought. When the young author entered Wall Street in June 1914 no one had any inkling of what the next half-century had in store. (The stock market did not even suspect that a World War was to break out in two months, and close down the New York Stock Exchange.) Now, in 1972, we find ourselves the richest and most powerful country on earth, but beset by all sorts of major problems and more apprehensive than confident of the future. Yet if we confine our attention to American investment experience, there is some comfort to be gleaned from the last 57 years. Through all their vicissitudes and casualties, as earth-shaking as they were unforeseen, it remained true that sound investment principles produced generally sound results. We must act on the assumption that they will continue to do so.
Note to the Reader: This book does not address itself to the overall financial policy of savers and investors; it deals only with that portion of their funds which they are prepared to place in marketable (or redeemable) securities, that is, in bonds and stocks. Consequently we do not discuss such important media as savings and time deposits, savings-and-loan-association accounts, life insurance, annuities, and real-estate mortgages or equity ownership. The reader should bear in mind that when he finds the word now,
or the equivalent, in the text, it refers to late 1971 or early 1972.
Commentary on the Introduction
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Notice that Graham announces from the start that this book will not tell you how to beat the market. No truthful book can.
Instead, this book will teach you three powerful lessons:
how you can minimize the odds of suffering irreversible losses;
how you can maximize the chances of achieving sustainable gains;
how you can control the self-defeating behavior that keeps most investors from reaching their full potential.
Back in the boom years of the late 1990s, when technology stocks seemed to be doubling in value every day, the notion that you could lose almost all your money seemed absurd. But, by the end of 2002, many of the dot-com and telecom stocks had lost 95% of their value or more. Once you lose 95% of your money, you have to gain 1,900% just to get back to where you started. ¹ Taking a foolish risk can put you so deep in the hole that it’s virtually impossible to get out. That’s why Graham constantly emphasizes the importance of avoiding losses—not just in Chapters 6, 14, and 20, but in the threads of warning that he has woven throughout his entire text.
But no matter how careful you are, the price of your investments will go down from time to time. While no one can eliminate that risk, Graham will show you how to manage it—and how to get your fears under control.
Are You an Intelligent Investor?
Now let’s answer a vitally important question. What exactly does Graham mean by an intelligent
investor? Back in the first edition of this book, Graham defines the term—and he makes it clear that this kind of intelligence has nothing to do with IQ or SAT scores. It simply means being patient, disciplined, and eager to learn; you must also be able to harness your emotions and think for yourself. This kind of intelligence, explains Graham, is a trait more of the character than of the brain.
²
There’s proof that high IQ and higher education are not enough to make an investor intelligent. In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management L.P., a hedge fund run by a battalion of mathematicians, computer scientists, and two Nobel Prize–winning economists, lost more than $2 billion in a matter of weeks on a huge bet that the bond market would return to normal.
But the bond market kept right on becoming more and more abnormal—and LTCM had borrowed so much money that its collapse nearly capsized the global financial system. ³
And back in the spring of 1720, Sir Isaac Newton owned shares in the South Sea Company, the hottest stock in England. Sensing that the market was getting out of hand, the great physicist muttered that he could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.
Newton dumped his South Sea shares, pocketing a 100% profit totaling £7,000. But just months later, swept up in the wild enthusiasm of the market, Newton jumped back in at a much higher price—and lost £20,000 (or more than $3 million in today’s money). For the rest of his life, he forbade anyone to speak the words South Sea
in his presence. ⁴
Sir Isaac Newton was one of the most intelligent people who ever lived, as most of us would define intelligence. But, in Graham’s terms, Newton was far from an intelligent investor. By letting the roar of the crowd override his own judgment, the world’s greatest scientist acted like a fool.
In short, if you’ve failed at investing so far, it’s not because you’re stupid. It’s because, like Sir Isaac Newton, you haven’t developed the emotional discipline that successful investing requires. In Chapter 8, Graham describes how to enhance your intelligence by harnessing your emotions and refusing to stoop to the market’s level of irrationality. There you can master his lesson that being an intelligent investor is more a matter of character
than brain.
A Chronicle of Calamity
Now let’s take a moment to look at some of the major financial developments of the past few years:
The worst market crash since the Great Depression, with U.S. stocks losing 50.2% of their value—or $7.4 trillion—between March 2000 and October 2002.
Far deeper drops in the share prices of the hottest companies of the 1990s, including AOL, Cisco, JDS Uniphase, Lucent, and Qualcomm—plus the utter destruction of hundreds of Internet stocks.
Accusations of massive financial fraud at some of the largest and most respected corporations in America, including Enron, Tyco, and Xerox.
The bankruptcies of such once-glistening companies as Conseco, Global Crossing, and WorldCom.
Allegations that accounting firms cooked the books, and even destroyed records, to help their clients mislead the investing public.
Charges that top executives at leading companies siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars for their own personal gain.
Proof that security analysts on Wall Street praised stocks publicly but admitted privately that they were garbage.
A stock market that, even after its bloodcurdling decline, seems overvalued by historical measures, suggesting to many experts that stocks have further yet to fall.
A relentless decline in interest rates that has left investors with no attractive alternative to stocks.
An investing environment bristling with the unpredictable menace of global terrorism and war in the Middle East.
Much of this damage could have been (and was!) avoided by investors who learned and lived by Graham’s principles. As Graham puts it, while enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.
By letting themselves get carried away—on Internet stocks, on big growth
stocks, on stocks as a whole—many people made the same stupid mistakes as Sir Isaac Newton. They let other investors’ judgments determine their own. They ignored Graham’s warning that the really dreadful losses
always occur after the buyer forgot to ask ‘How much?’
Most painfully of all, by losing their self-control just when they needed it the most, these people proved Graham’s assertion that the investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself.
The Sure Thing That Wasn’T
Many of those people got especially carried away on technology and Internet stocks, believing the high-tech hype that this industry would keep outgrowing every other for years to come, if not forever:
In mid-1999, after earning a 117.3% return in just the first five months of the year, Monument Internet Fund portfolio manager Alexander Cheung predicted that his fund would gain 50% a year over the next three to five years and an annual average of 35% over the next 20 years.
⁵
After his Amerindo Technology Fund rose an incredible 248.9% in 1999, portfolio manager Alberto Vilar ridiculed anyone who dared to doubt that the Internet was a perpetual moneymaking machine: If you’re out of this sector, you’re going to underperform. You’re in a horse and buggy, and I’m in a Porsche. You don’t like tenfold growth opportunities? Then go with someone else.
⁶
In February 2000, hedge-fund manager James J. Cramer proclaimed that Internet-related companies are the only ones worth owning right now.
These winners of the new world,
as he called them, are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad.
Cramer even took a potshot at Graham: You have to throw out all of the matrices and formulas and texts that existed before the Web…. If we used any of what Graham and Dodd teach us, we wouldn’t have a dime under management.
⁷
All these so-called experts ignored Graham’s sober words of warning: Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not translate into obvious profits for investors.
While it seems easy to foresee which industry will grow the fastest, that foresight has no real value if most other investors are already expecting the same thing. By the time everyone decides that a given industry is obviously
the best one to invest in, the prices of its stocks have been bid up so high that its future returns have nowhere to go but down.
For now at least, no one has the gall to try claiming that technology will still be the world’s greatest growth industry. But make sure you remember this: The people who now claim that the next sure thing
will be health care, or energy, or real estate, or gold, are no more likely to be right in the end than the hypesters of high tech turned out to be.
The Silver Lining
If no price seemed too high for stocks in the 1990s, in 2003 we’ve reached the point at which no price appears to be low enough. The pendulum has swung, as Graham knew it always does, from irrational exuberance to unjustifiable pessimism. In 2002, investors yanked $27 billion out of stock mutual funds, and a survey conducted by the Securities Industry Association found that one out of 10 investors had cut back on stocks by at least 25%. The same people who were eager to buy stocks in the late 1990s—when they were going up in price and, therefore, becoming expensive—sold stocks as they went down in price and, by definition, became cheaper.
As Graham shows so brilliantly in Chapter 8, this is exactly backwards. The intelligent investor realizes that stocks become more risky, not less, as their prices rise—and less risky, not more, as their prices fall. The intelligent investor dreads a bull market, since it makes stocks more costly to buy. And conversely (so long as you keep enough cash on hand to meet your spending needs), you should welcome a bear market, since it puts stocks back on sale. ⁸
So take heart: The death of the bull market is not the bad news everyone believes it to be. Thanks to the decline in stock prices, now is a considerably safer—and saner—time to be building wealth. Read on, and let Graham show you how.
Chapter 1
Investment versus Speculation: Results to Be Expected by the Intelligent Investor
This chapter will outline the viewpoints that will be set forth in the remainder of the book. In particular we wish to develop at the outset our concept of appropriate portfolio policy for the individual, nonprofessional investor.
Investment versus Speculation
What do we mean by investor
? Throughout this book the term will be used in contradistinction to speculator.
As far back as 1934, in our textbook Security Analysis,¹ we attempted a precise formulation of the difference between the two, as follows: An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.
While we have clung tenaciously to this definition over the ensuing 38 years, it is worthwhile noting the radical changes that have occurred in the use of the term investor
during this period. After the great market decline of 1929–1932 all common stocks were widely regarded as speculative by nature. (A leading authority stated flatly that only bonds could be bought for investment.²) Thus we had then to defend our definition against the charge that it gave too wide scope to the concept of investment.
Now our concern is of the opposite sort. We must prevent our readers from accepting the common jargon which applies the term investor
to anybody and everybody in the stock market. In our last edition we cited the following headline of a front-page article of our leading financial journal in June 1962:
SMALL INVESTORS BEARISH, THEY ARE SELLING ODD-LOTS SHORT
In October 1970 the same journal had an editorial critical of what it called reckless investors,
who this time were rushing in on the buying side.
These quotations well illustrate the confusion that has been dominant for many years in the use of the words investment and speculation. Think of our suggested definition of investment given above, and compare it with the sale of a few shares of stock by an inexperienced member of the public, who does not even own what he is selling, and has some largely emotional conviction that he will be able to buy them back at a much lower price. (It is not irrelevant to point out that when the 1962 article appeared the market had already experienced a decline of major size, and was now getting ready for an even greater upswing. It was about as poor a time as possible for selling short.) In a more general sense, the later-used phrase reckless investors
could be regarded as a laughable contradiction in terms—something like spendthrift misers
—were this misuse of language not so mischievous.
The newspaper employed the word investor
in these instances because, in the easy language of Wall Street, everyone who buys or sells a security has become an investor, regardless of what he buys, or for what purpose, or at what price, or whether for cash or on margin. Compare this with the attitude of the public toward common stocks in 1948, when over 90% of those queried expressed themselves as opposed to the purchase of common stocks.³ About half gave as their reason not safe, a gamble,
and about half, the reason not familiar with.
* It is indeed ironical (though not surprising) that common-stock purchases of all kinds were quite generally regarded as highly speculative or risky at a time when they were selling on a most attractive basis, and due soon to begin their greatest advance in history; conversely the very fact they had advanced to what were undoubtedly dangerous levels as judged by past experience later transformed them into investments,
and the entire stock-buying public into investors.
The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is a cause for concern. We have often said that Wall Street as an institution would be well advised to reinstate this distinction and to emphasize it in all its dealings with the public. Otherwise the stock exchanges may some day be blamed for heavy speculative losses, which those who suffered them had not been properly warned against. Ironically, once more, much of the recent financial embarrassment of some stock-exchange firms seems to have come from the inclusion of speculative common stocks in their own capital funds. We trust that the reader of this book will gain a reasonably clear idea of the risks that are inherent in common-stock commitments—risks which are inseparable from the opportunities of profit that they offer, and both of which must be allowed for in the investor’s calculations.
What we have just said indicates that there may no longer be such a thing as a simon-pure investment policy comprising representative common stocks—in the sense that one can always wait to buy them at a price that involves no risk of a market or quotational
loss large enough to be disquieting. In most periods the investor must recognize the existence of a speculative factor in his common-stock holdings. It is his task to keep this component within minor limits, and to be prepared financially and psychologically for adverse results that may be of short or long duration.
Two paragraphs should be added about stock speculation per se, as distinguished from the speculative component now inherent in most representative common stocks. Outright speculation is neither illegal, immoral, nor (for most people) fattening to the pocketbook. More than that, some speculation is necessary and unavoidable, for in many common-stock situations there are substantial possibilities of both profit and loss, and the risks therein must be assumed by someone.* There is intelligent speculation as there is intelligent investing. But there are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the foremost are: (1) speculating when you think you are investing; (2) speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and (3) risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose.
In our conservative view every nonprofessional who operates on margin † should recognize that he is ipso facto speculating, and it is his broker’s duty so to advise him. And everyone who buys a so-called hot
common-stock issue, or makes a purchase in any way similar thereto, is either speculating or gambling. Speculation is always fascinating, and it can be a lot of fun while you are ahead of the game. If you want to try your luck at it, put aside a portion—the smaller the better—of your capital in a separate fund for this purpose. Never add more money to this account just because the market has gone up and profits are rolling in. (That’s the time to think of taking money out of your speculative fund.) Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account, nor in any part of your thinking.
Results to Be Expected by the Defensive Investor
We have already defined the defensive investor as one interested chiefly in safety plus freedom from bother. In general what course should he follow and what return can he expect under average normal conditions
—if such conditions really exist? To answer these questions we shall consider first what we wrote on the subject seven years ago, next what significant changes have occurred since then in the underlying factors governing the investor’s expectable return, and finally what he should do and what he should expect under present-day (early 1972) conditions.
1. What We Said Six Years Ago
We recommended that the investor divide his holdings between high-grade bonds and leading common stocks; that the proportion held in bonds be never less than 25% or more than 75%, with the converse being necessarily true for the common-stock component; that his simplest choice would be to maintain a 50–50 proportion between the two, with adjustments to restore the equality when market developments had disturbed it by as much as, say, 5%. As an alternative policy he might choose to reduce his common-stock component to 25% if he felt the market was dangerously high,
and conversely to advance it toward the maximum of 75% if he felt that a decline in stock prices was making them increasingly attractive.
In 1965 the investor could obtain about 4½% on high-grade taxable bonds and 3¼% on good tax-free bonds. The dividend return on leading common stocks (with the DJIA at 892) was only about 3.2%. This fact, and others, suggested caution. We implied that at normal levels of the market
the investor should be able to obtain an initial dividend return of between 3½% and 4½% on his stock purchases, to which should be added a steady increase in underlying value (and in the normal market price
) of a representative stock list of about the same amount, giving a return from dividends and appreciation combined of about 7½% per year. The half and half division between bonds and stocks would yield about 6% before income tax. We added that the stock component should carry a fair degree of protection against a loss of purchasing power caused by large-scale inflation.
It should be pointed out that the above arithmetic indicated expectation of a much lower rate of advance in the stock market than had been realized between 1949 and 1964. That rate had averaged a good deal better than 10% for listed stocks as a whole, and it was quite generally regarded as a sort of guarantee that similarly satisfactory results could be counted on in the future. Few people were willing to consider seriously the possibility that the high rate of advance in the past means that stock prices are now too high,
and hence that "the wonderful results since 1949 would imply not very good but bad results for the future."⁴
2. What Has Happened Since 1964
The major change since 1964 has been the rise in interest rates on first-grade bonds to record high levels, although there has since been a considerable recovery from the lowest prices of 1970. The obtainable return on good corporate issues is now about 7½% and even more against 4½% in 1964. In the meantime the dividend return on DJIA-type stocks had a fair advance also during the market decline of 1969–70, but as we write (with the Dow
at 900) it is less than 3.5% against 3.2% at the end of 1964. The change in going interest rates produced a maximum decline of about 38% in the market price of medium-term (say 20-year) bonds during this period.
There is a paradoxical aspect to these developments. In 1964 we discussed at length the possibility that the price of stocks might be too high and subject ultimately to a serious decline; but we did not consider specifically the possibility that the same might happen to the price of high-grade bonds. (Neither did anyone else that we know of.) We did warn (on p. 90) that a long-term bond may vary widely in price in response to changes in interest rates.
In the light of what has since happened we think that this warning—with attendant examples—was insufficiently stressed. For the fact is that if the investor had a given sum in the DJIA at its closing price of 874 in 1964 he would have had a small profit thereon in late 1971; even at the lowest level (631) in 1970 his indicated loss would have been less than that shown on good long-term bonds. On the other hand, if he had confined his bond-type investments to U.S. savings bonds, short-term corporate issues, or savings accounts, he would have had no loss in market value of his principal during this period and he would have enjoyed a higher income return than was offered by good stocks. It turned out, therefore, that true cash equivalents
proved to be better investments in 1964 than common stocks—in spite of the inflation experience that in theory should have favored stocks over cash. The decline in quoted principal value of good longer-term bonds was due to developments in the money market, an abstruse area which ordinarily does not have an important bearing on the investment policy of individuals.
This is just another of an endless series of experiences over time that have demonstrated that the future of security prices is never predictable.* Almost always bonds have fluctuated much less than stock prices, and investors generally could buy good bonds of any maturity without having to worry about changes in their market value. There were a few exceptions to this rule, and the period after 1964 proved to be one of them. We shall have more to say about change in bond prices in a later chapter.
3. Expectations and Policy in Late 1971 and Early 1972
Toward the end of 1971 it was possible to obtain 8% taxable interest on good medium-term corporate bonds, and 5.7% tax-free on good state or municipal securities. In the shorter-term field the investor could realize about 6% on U.S. government issues due in five years. In the latter case the buyer need not be concerned about a possible loss in market value, since he is sure of full repayment, including the 6% interest return, at the end of a comparatively short holding period. The DJIA at its recurrent price level of 900 in 1971 yields only 3.5%.
Let us assume that now, as in the past, the basic policy decision to be made is how to divide the fund between high-grade bonds (or other so-called cash equivalents
) and leading DJIA-type stocks. What course should the investor follow under present conditions, if we have no strong reason to predict either a significant upward or a significant downward movement for some time in the future? First let us point out that if there is no serious adverse change, the defensive investor should be able to count on the current 3.5% dividend return on his stocks and also on an average annual appreciation of about 4%. As we shall explain later this appreciation is based essentially on the reinvestment by the various companies of a corresponding amount annually out of undistributed profits. On a before-tax basis the combined return of his stocks would then average, say, 7.5%, somewhat less than his interest on high-grade bonds.* On an after-tax basis the average return on stocks would work out at some 5.3%.⁵ This would be about the same as is now obtainable on good tax-free medium-term bonds.
These expectations are much less favorable for stocks against bonds than they were in our 1964 analysis. (That conclusion follows inevitably from the basic fact that bond yields have gone up much more than stock yields since 1964.) We must never lose sight of the fact that the interest and principal payments on good bonds are much better protected and therefore more certain than the dividends and price appreciation on stocks. Consequently we are forced to the conclusion that now, toward the end of 1971, bond investment appears clearly preferable to stock investment. If we could be sure that this conclusion is right we would have to advise the defensive investor to put all his money in bonds and none in common stocks until the current yield relationship changes significantly in favor of stocks.
But of course we cannot be certain that bonds will work out better than stocks from today’s levels. The reader will immediately think of the inflation factor as a potent reason on the other side. In the next chapter we shall argue that our considerable experience with inflation in the United States during this century would not support the choice of stocks against bonds at present differentials in yield. But there is always the possibility—though we consider it remote—of an accelerating inflation, which in one way or another would have to make stock equities preferable to bonds payable in a fixed amount of dollars.* There is the alternative possibility—which we also consider highly unlikely—that American business will become so profitable, without stepped-up inflation, as to justify a large increase in common-stock values in the next few years. Finally, there is the more familiar possibility that we shall witness another great speculative rise in the stock market without a real justification in the underlying values. Any of these reasons, and perhaps others we haven’t thought of, might cause the investor to regret a 100% concentration on bonds even at their more favorable yield levels.
Hence, after this foreshortened discussion of the major considerations, we