CHAPTER 2 - The Intelligent Investor (TII) (English)

Welcome back to the Intelligent Investor series.

Chapter-2 ----The Investor and Inflation

This chapter is an introduction to inflation. Again, Graham uses very specific historical numbers and data to discuss rates of inflation and their effect on investment performance, the relative merits of investing in stocks vs bonds when keeping inflation in mind, and so on.

The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham, is probably the most important and influential value investing book ever written. Warren Buffet described it as “by far the best book ever written on investing”.
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. 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.
According Warren 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”.