STEPHEN CRANSTON: Sage advice from the past still relevant for today’s investors
Benjamin Graham says in his book The Intelligent Investor that investors should not try to forecast but rather focus on today’s price valuations
The lockdown has been a good time to turn again to the classics. Many of us have more time on our hands and no access to activities such as golf. And we don’t want our minds to turn to mush glued to Netflix or DStv. For some it will be a good time to read or reread the Charles Dickens and Jane Austen novels gathering dust on their shelves.
Business textbooks will probably make us feel even more depressed. But Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, published in 1949, doesn’t read like a textbook — unlike works of the patron saints of the chartered financial analysts (CFA) world, such as Harry Markowitz and Bill Sharpe. Graham was not a stats-driven theoretician. He had worked on Wall Street and even made a substantial amount through investing in Geico, an early adopter of what we would call the Outsurance model of insurance...
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