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Graham and Dodd's 1934 classic explains the principles of value investing. "It's a textbook, really, about how to value companies. The nuts and bolts." Like, for example, how to assess a fixed-value investment, and how to choose common stocks. A must-have for rising analysts and an enduring bible for any investor who wants to know when to buy, sell, or hold. [Byron Wein Annotation]

Find a wide selection of interviews with business luminaries in our Interviews Section

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Cesar Labitan, Jr. MD (an MBAE student at Purdue University - Calumet) has assembled a collection of selected passages from the letters of Warren E. Buffett to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The idea was borrowed from Professor Lawrence Cunningham's 1997 book, "The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America" but differs from that book in the manner and order the sections are presented to the reader. This book presents Mr. Buffett's business teachers first and then progresses into Mr. Buffett's documented business thoughts and ideas. Finally, this book focuses on Mr. Buffett's writings related to his four major investment selection criteria. Because Buffett "never wanted to take other parts of the report and package them for resale" this entire work is free and available through the Internet.

Editor's Note: This book is also available for free in MS Word format. You can find it in the MBA Depot File Vault at:
http://www.mbadepot.com/vault/vault.php?ID=145

With a focus on corporate governance and business ethics, this timely book covers the evolution of socially responsible investing over time and around the world. Author Russell Sparkes is a U.K.-based authority with a bird's eye view on the global perspective. Chapters cover Britain's historic 2001 SRI regulations, as well as what Japan and Europe at large are doing in the field of SRI. Interestingly, Scandinavia, via the Church of Sweden, was one of Europe's first pioneers in SRI, creating a fund in 1980 that avoided investment in South Africa and in armaments. Socially responsible investment, argues the author, is part of the larger global business revolution, and no business can afford to take an isolationist stance in this arena. [HBS Working Knowledge Annotation]

Once in Golconda is a dramatic chronicle of the breathtaking rise, devastating fall, and painstaking rebirth of Wall Street in the years between the wars. Focusing on the lives and fortunes of some of the era's most memorable traders, bankers, boosters, and frauds, John Brooks brings to vivid life all the ruthlessness, greed, and reckless euphoria of the '20s bull market, the desperation of the days leading up to the crash of '29, and the bitterness of the years that followed.

Emanuel Derman was one of the first physicists to move to Wall Street, and his career paralleled the growth of quantitative trading over the past twenty years. In My Life as a Quant , he traces his transformation from ambitious young scientist to managing director and head of the renowned Quantitative Strategies group at Goldman, Sachs and Co. Derman's tale recounts his adventures with quants, traders and other high fliers on Wall Street as he became the best-known quant in the business. He describes the struggles of research and his interactions with an assorted cast of famous scientists. He relates his impressions of some of the most creative minds on Wall Street, including Fischer Black, with whom he collaborated on the widely used Black-Derman-Toy model of interest rates. Throughout his story he reflects on the appropriate way to apply the refined methods of physics to the hurly-burly world of markets and the people that inhabit them.

Stock investing is a relatively recent phenomenon and the inventory of true classics is somewhat slim. When asked, people in the know will always list books by Benjamin Graham, Burton G. Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip A. Fisher. You'll know you're getting really good advice if they also mention Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the thinly disguised biography of Jesse Livermore, a remarkable character who first started speculating in New England bucket shops at the turn of the century. Livermore, who was banned from these shady operations because of his winning ways, soon moved to Wall Street where he made and lost his fortune several times over. What makes this book so valuable are the observations that Lefèvre records about investing, speculating, and the nature of the market itself.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is full of lessons that are as relevant today as they were in 1923 when the book was first published. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

Whether you're buying whole companies or just a few shares, there's no better investing how-to book than this. But don't take my word for it; the book is famously revered by no less an intelligent investor than Warren Buffett. Graham's advice is simple -- any stock you buy should be worth more than it costs -- and he provides a method for determining a stock's intrinsic value. The newest edition, published last year, features witty annotations from Money columnist Jason Zweig that prove Graham's advice is now more relevant than when first published in 1949.
- Damon Darliln, Senior editor, Business 2.0

Mauboussin is not your average Wall Street equity analyst, writing investment recommendations whose topical interest wanes a few days after the report is issued. His strategy reports begin with scientific findings from diverse fields, then show why an investor should care. This book is a collection of 30 short reports, revised and updated, covering animal behavior ("Guppy Love: The Role of Imitation in Markets"), psychology ("Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers"), philosophy of science ("The Janitor's Dream: Why Listening to Individuals Can be Hazardous to Your Wealth") and other fields. Each essay describes a fascinating scientific finding, then develops and applies it to personal investing. "Survival of the Fittest," for example, begins by discussing how Tiger Woods improved his golf swing, introduces the concept of fitness landscapes from evolutionary biology, then explains why investors in commodity-producing companies should like strong centralized management, while technology-stock buyers should prefer flexible organizations with lots of disruptive new ideas. The book is breezy and well written, but not dumbed down, and provides extensive references. It can be read for entertainment as popular science or to broaden your investment thinking.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Benjamin Graham has been called the most important investment thinker of the twentieth century. As a master investor, pioneering stock analyst, and mentor to investment superstars, he has no peer.

This volume is Graham's timeless guide to interpreting and understanding financial statements. It has long been out of print, but now joins Graham's other masterpieces, The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis, as the three priceless keys to understanding Graham and value investing.

The advice he offers in this book is as useful and prescient today as it was sixty years ago. As he writes in the preface, "if you have precise information as to a company's present financial position and its past earnings record, you are better equipped to gauge its future possibilities. And this is the essential function and value of security analysis."

Written just three years after his landmark Security Analysis, The Interpretation of Financial Statements gets to the heart of the master's ideas on value investing in astonishingly few pages. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record. Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and well-being of any company.