Benjamin Graham Who Was Him?

Early Life and Education

Benjamin Graham was born in 1894 in London, UK. When he was still tiny, his family moved to America, where they lost their savings during the Bank Panic of 1907. Graham attended Columbia University on a scholarship and accepted a job offer after graduation on Wall Street with Newburger, Henderson, and Loeb.12

By 25, he was already earning about $500,000 annually. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 lost Graham almost all his investments and taught him valuable lessons about the investing world.3 His observations after the crash inspired him to write a research book with David Dodd called Security Analysis. Irving Kahn, one of the greatest American investors, also contributed to the research content of the book.

Notable Accomplishments

Value Investing

Benjamin Graham is considered the founder of stock analysis, particularly value investing. According to Graham and Dodd, value investing involves deriving the intrinsic value of a joint stock independent of its market price. Using a company’s factors, such as its assets, earnings, and dividend payouts, the intrinsic value of a stock can be found and compared to its market value. If the intrinsic value exceeds the current price, the Investor should buy and hold until a mean reversion occurs.

A mean reversion is the theory that, over time, the market price and intrinsic price will converge towards each other until the stock price reflects its actual value. By buying an undervalued stock, the Investor is, in effect, paying less for it and should sell when the price is trading at its intrinsic worth. This effect of price convergence is only bound to happen in an efficient market.

Graham was a strong proponent of efficient markets. If markets were not efficient, then the point of value investing would be pointless, as the fundamental principle of value investing lies in the ability of the markets to correct their intrinsic values. Common stocks will not remain inflated or bottomed out forever despite the irrationality of investors in the market.

Benjamin Graham noted that due to the irrationality of investors, including other factors such as the inability to predict the future and the fluctuations of the stock market, buying undervalued or out-of-favor stocks is sure to provide a margin of safety, i.e., room for human error, for the investor.

Also, investors can achieve a margin of safety by purchasing stocks in companies with high dividend yields and low debt-to-equity ratios and diversifying their portfolios. If a company goes bankrupt, the margin of safety would mitigate the losses the investor would have. Graham typically bought stocks trading at two-thirds of their net-value as his margin of safety cushion.

The original Benjamin Graham Formula for finding the intrinsic value of a stock was:  × (8.5 + 2)where: = intrinsic value = trailing 12-mth  of the company8.5 =  ratio of a zero-growth stock� = long-term growth rate of the company​V = EPS × (8.5 + 2g)where:V = intrinsic valueEPS = trailing 12-month EPS of the company8.5 = P/E ratio of a zero-growth stockg = long-term growth rate of the company​

In 1974, the formula was revised to include both a risk-free rate of 4.4%, which was the average yield of high-grade corporate bonds in 1962, and the current yield on AAA corporate bonds represented by the letter Y:

Published Works

Security Analysis was first published in 1934, at the start of the Great Depression, while Graham was a lecturer at Columbia Business School. The book laid out the fundamental groundwork of value investing, which involves buying undervalued stocks with the potential to grow over time. At a time when the stock market was known to be a speculative vehicle, the notions of intrinsic value and margin of safety, which were first introduced in security analysis, paved the way for a fundamental analysis of stocks void of speculation.4.

In 1949, Graham wrote the acclaimed book The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. The Intelligent Investor is widely considered the bible of value investing and features a character known as Mr. Market, Graham’s metaphor for the mechanics of market prices.

Mr. Market is an investor’s imaginary business partner who daily tries to either sell his shares to the Investor or buy the shares from the Investor. Mr. Market is often irrational and shows up at the Investor’s door with different prices on different days, depending on his mood, optimism, or pessimism. Of course, the Investor is not obligated to accept any buy or sell offers.

Graham points out that instead of relying on daily market sentiments, which are run by investors’ greed and fear, the Investor should analyze a stock’s worth based on the company’s reports of its operations and financial position. This analysis should strengthen the Investor’s judgment when Mr. Market makes s/he an offer.

According to Graham, the intelligent Investor is one who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists. The Investor should look for opportunities to buy low and sell high due to price-value discrepancies arising from economic depressions, market crashes, one-time events, temporary negative publicity, and human errors. The Investor should ignore the market noise if no such opportunity is present.

While echoing the fundamentals introduced in Security Analysis, The Intelligent Investor also provides key lessons to readers and investors by advising investors not to follow the herd or crowd, to hold a portfolio of 50% stocks and 50% bonds or cash, to be wary of day trading, to take advantage of market fluctuations, to not buy stocks simply because they are liked, to understand that market volatility is a given and can be used to an investor’s advantage, and to look out for creative accounting techniques that companies use to make their EPS value more attractive.

Legacy

One notable disciple of Benjamin Graham is Warren Buffett, who was one of his students at Columbia University. After graduation, Buffett worked for Graham’s company, Graham-Newman Corporation, until Graham retired. Buffett, under the mentorship of Graham and value investing principles, went on to become one of the most successful investors of all time and, as of 2022, the seventh wealthiest man in the world, valued at almost $103 billion.Other notable investors who studied and worked under the tutelage of Graham include Irving Kahn, Christopher Browne, and Walter Schloss.

Although Benjamin Graham died in 1976, his work is still widely used by value investors and financial analysts running fundamentals on a company’s prospects for value and growth in the twenty-first century.

What is Benjamin Graham known for?

Benjamin Graham dubbed the “father of value investing,” is known for his investing style, literary contributions to investing, and research. Graham lectured at his alma mater, Columbia University, and eventually became a professor of finance there. His legendary book, The Intelligent Investor, introduced value investing to the financial and investing world. He also defined investment principles some of the world’s most infamous investors adopted.