Benjamin Graham: The Memoirs of the Dean of Wall Street

The Dean of Wall Street confesses. That would be a great lead, except that Benjamin Graham has little to confess. Rather, Graham, considered the father of modern security analysis, tells us about his life, career, and his intellectual passions. He shares his thoughts about a range of issues, and about his experiences. For instance, did you know that he valued his intellectual pursuits more than making money? Or that he was a Broadway playwright? These memoirs are more concerned with Graham’s story than with his investment techniques. We […] recommend this book to those who want to learn more about Ben Graham, the man. It is not for those who want to learn more about Ben Graham, the founder of value investing.

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The book is very appropriately titled. The story is told directly by Ben, and it covers his life from his family when his father passed away to his education at Columbia after losing his scholarship the first time.
Ben was a colorful person, and reading an autobiography like this allows the reader to see the paths a great person chose in life to really become what we remember him for.
Of course, the fact the Warren Buffet was his best student and biggest advocate was probably the reason I picked the book up in the first place, but after reading it, I discovered the Ben was wise in more than just Wallstreet. My favorite wisdom derived from Ben is on the subject of sex and relationships, as he had so many of the latter while becoming the great investor that we first associate with him.
I feel that I learned skills that will help me grow to be wiser by reading his bio. I definitely suggest the book to anyone who is interested in not only Ben’s life but in contemplating how to improve his or her own.

This book will be of interest mostly to value investors of the type who hang on Warren Buffett’s every word and so might be curious to learn about the life of Buffett’s great mentor and the founder of value investing. If you are looking for actionable investment tips, though, look elsewhere (The Intelligent Investor or Security Analysis). Also, if your goal is to get to the heart of the man Benjamin Graham you also may be disappointed. Graham was very guarded, and his memoirs reflect this. He is stingy in writing about his feelings and also stingy with details about important life events–both personal and professional. Still, if you are interested in value investing and in Ben Graham, subjects on which not enough has been written, this book is an important one.

While Graham doesn’t go into much detail about his investment operations, you do get a bit of a feel for the environment that formed the man. There was the proud but cash-strapped family that taught him about the value of money and hard work. Before Graham ever was interested in business his mind was formed by a rich intellectual life, especially his life-long interest in literature and the classics in addition to a strong grasp of math. There is a nice description of the early days of Wall Street, its merits and its depredations, when Graham got his start during World War I. Graham also recounts the roaring twenties, followed by the crash and the Depression which left their mark on his investment strategy for the rest of his life. The book gives you a glimpse of a large swath of American economic and stock market history, though I often found myself hungry for more detail.

Perhaps the least known aspect of Graham’s life today is his work in economics and monetary policy, contributions that have been mostly forgotten but had some influence in his day. Surprisingly, Graham writes that he believes his economic theories would be his greatest legacy.

The flow of the story is a bit disjointed as Graham jumps around in overlapping chapters about different spheres of his life. To his credit Graham is very honest about what he sees as his flaws. One of the flaws that he regrets most is his inability to have really close friendships. Though he had many close business relationships and social acquaintances and so on, he said that he was unable to let people get close enough to have truly intimate relationships. Unfortunately the book too suffers from this flaw in its lack of detail and feeling at times and its skimming over important life events.

I’m not sure that Graham meant for the book to be a complete, published account of his life, rather it seems it was more of a relatively rough sketch of his experiences addressed to his family and friends. Also the account was written long before the end of his life. This incomplete account is a shame because Graham was a fascinating character who was near the center of a lot of historical events and rubbed shoulders with many of the important people of his day. He was a prolific and wide-ranging personality and one of the great pioneers of the financial world. He wrote plays even as he was publishing his seminal investment textbook, teaching at Columbia and amassing one of the most successful investment records of all time.

Perhaps Warren Buffett put his legacy best when he wrote: “It is rare that the founder of a discipline does not find his work eclipsed in rather short order by his 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 a runner up in the field of security analysis.”