The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel
The purpose of The Intelligent Investor 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.
Introduction:
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.”
Contents:
- Investment versus Speculation: Results to Be Expected by the Intelligent Investor
- The Investor and Inflation
- A Century of Stock-Market History: The Level of Stock Prices in Early 1972
- General Portfolio Policy: The Defensive Investor
- The Defensive Investor and Common Stocks
- Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor: Negative Approach
- Portfolio Policy for the Enterprising Investor: The Positive Side
- The Investor and Market Fluctuations
- Investing in Investment Funds
- The Investor and His Advisers
- Security Analysis for the Lay Investor: General Approach
- Things to Consider About Per-Share Earnings
- A Comparison of Four Listed Companies
- Stock Selection for the Defensive Investor
- Stock Selection for the Enterprising Investor
- Convertible Issues and Warrants
- Four Extremely Instructive Case Histories
- A Comparison of Eight Pairs of Companies
- Shareholders and Managements: Dividend Policy
- “Margin of Safety” as the Central Concept of Investment