Zen- Vesting: The Road to Graham-and-Doddsville (3)

The framework of Graham and Dodd is simple but not easy. More importantly, is the framework, like any other, worthless to those investors who do not know themselves. It is also worthless to those who do not have an independent opinion about a stock in question. Is the stock a cigar- but investment? Is it a compounder? Or is it something in between?

To come up with a satisfactory conclusion the "Value Investor" must scrutinize potential investments one by one. He must examine them not on the ground of what they are called by fellow investors, but what they truly are.

It makes no sense to set a high esteem upon wide moat, great management etc., if the investor does not first know what old-fashioned "Value Investing" really is about. Because this investor will never learn about the nuances of Value Investing". The nuances of a stock fulfilling one or more parameters of value, or a stock having a great many of them. They will never grasp how those stocks differ.

The framework to "Value Investing" outlined by Graham and Dodd is of great importance, even for “scuttlebutt” investors. And a few useful and simple rules at hand do more toward succeeding in "Value Investing" than whole volumes of complex ones.

The salutary precepts of "Value Investing", and getting to know oneself, should be the "Value Investor's" daily meditation. Because they are the foundations by which he ought to square his analysis and actions in stock market investing.

 

 

Reference:

Frances and Henry Hazlitt; The Wisdom of the Stoics; University Press of America 1984