Fourth chapter: General portfolio policy, the defensive investor

There is an old principle out there that low risk takers should be content with a matching low returns on their investments. However, Ben Graham says that the rate of return depends on the intelligent efforts an investor is willing to undertake. Passive investors, who want both safety and freedom, should expect minimum return. An active investor with intelligence and skill can realize maximum return.

A defensive investor should allocate his funds in 2 areas : high-grade bonds and high-grade stocks. He should not have less than 25% or more than 75% in common stocks with the rest in bonds. Therefore, a common medium point would likely be 50%-50%. The percentage in stocks can go up if the market goes down and the investor sees bargains.
In real life though, most of the investors face a tough time buying bargain stocks during a bear market because they would have to go against the very human nature that produces market bulls and bears. Due to this reason, Ben Graham recommends a 50%-50% oversimplified investment portfolio.

Bonds : as far as bonds go, there are many considerations that need to be accounted for. For instance, should an investor buy taxable or tax-free bonds, long term maturity or short term? The decision can be based on the difference in yields compared to the investor's tax bracket. As an example, if the investor is in the maximum tax bracket, he will be better off buying tax-free municipal bonds than corporate bonds which will be subject to taxes.

The choice on long term to short term maturities depends on factors such as a steady, but lower annual yield (for long term) and the opportunity cost for a possible gain in principal value (again for long term).

Ben Graham has provided examples of savings bonds such as Series E and Series H and I will not elaborate them on this article since bonds may have drastically changes after so many years.

Third Chapter: A century of stock market history

The third chapter shows the manner in which stocks have advanced through many ups and downs in the past century. It shows the stock market picture in terms of 10-year averages with respect to earnings, dividends and stock prices. From 1900 to 1970, there are 3 patterns each covering a third of the 70 years. The first pattern begins in 1900 and finishes in 1924. Annual advance in this period averaged approximately 3% (S&P).

The Great Depression began in 1929 and there were irregular fluctuations in the stock market till 1949. The annual advance was 1.5% (S&P). 1949 marked the end of the second pattern.

The third pattern was in the midst of a great bull market from 1949 to 1968. Annual advance rate was 11% to early 1966 (S&P).
Such a return caused investors to expect similar results in the future and on the contrary, the market declined 36% by 1970 (S&P).

As far as earnings and dividends go, only 2 decades out of the 9 decades had a decrease in earnings (1891-1900 and 1931-1940). There is no decade after 1900 that shows a decrease in average dividends. The rates of growth in all these periods were far from a steady number. An investor can't tell what gain he/she would expect in future by looking at these different periods.

By looking at the past-century history of the stock market, there is no guarantee of any return going into the future. Each investor must make his own decision and accept his investing responsibility. The investor should not borrow money to buy stocks. He should also reduce stock holdings in his portfolio to a maximum of 50% of the portfolio. The other 50% would go to bonds.

Second chapter : The investor and inflation

Inflation usually relates to an increase of prices of commodities over a certain period of time. Inflation erodes the return on an investment and income. There is no direct correlation between inflation and earnings rate on capital. Earnings have shown no tendency to increase with inflation. If anything, as the corporate debt increases, interest rates will increase too. So, debt has become the real problem of a company.
Having said that, there is no guaranteed way of using common stocks as a hedge against inflation. The only thing guaranteed is that average market value of a stock will not grow at any uniform rate.

There can be other alternatives for hedging against inflation like real estate. Evidently, even real estate is subject to fluctuations as being experienced in the US. Serious problems can be avoided by buying real estate with a margin of safety in a right location.

Conclusion is that, an investor can't put all his eggs in one basket and must have some kind of insurance against inflation.

First chapter : Investors versus speculators

I finished reading the first chapter and I have documented below my interpretations of the first chapter.

By definition, an investor is someone who conducts a thorough analysis so that he would keep his principal safe and expect to have an adequate return. A speculator, on the other hand, doesn't follow this criteria.
To give the reader an illustration, if I have $1000 to invest, I would first make sure that there is almost no possibility of losing my $1000 in the first place. I have put an emphasis on the word "almost" because there will always be some probability of losing the principal, albeit very low. Then I would need to invest in a good business that would give me a nice return over time.
The question a reader may ask is, how will I know that my principal is safe? The only way to find out is to compare the price of a stock with the value of the underlying business. Ben Graham calls this "margin of safety". There are more details on margin of safety in subsequent chapters.

Speculation shouldn't be looked down upon. Indeed, speculation can be lucrative and some speculation can't be avoided. Problems occur when people imagine they are investors when they are, in reality, speculators. If you know what your boundaries are and you recognize you are a speculator, you can use intelligent speculation to make serious money. You may also switch between the roles of an investor and a speculator.

Introduction of this website

This website is dedicated to Benjamin Graham's principles of investing and valuation of stocks. Please note that I am a blogger and an individual investor. Certainly, I don't call myself an expert in computing intrinsic values of underlying businesses.
Please consult your financial advisor for individual advice.

I am currently reading Ben Graham's book called "The Intelligent Investor". This book is considered to be THE BIBLE of value investing. Warren Buffet has mentioned that this is the best book on investing. He read it when he was very young and since then, he has never turned back. As I go though the chapters in the book, I will update this blog with my interpretation of Ben Graham's notes. Having said that, if you have no plans to read more on value investing, you just need need to be aware of 2 basic principles :

1. Buy good businesses : Remember stocks represent companies which have employees, infrastructure and business models. When you are buying a stock, you are buying a fractional ownership of the underlying company.

2. Buy at a discount to the intrinsic value : No matter how much confidence you might have in a company or how much experience you might have in evaluating businesses, you can always end up with the possibility of paying more or paying the intrinsic price itself. This approach will leave you no room to account for huge market declines or an error on your part in evaluating a business in the first place. Your safest bet is to buy at a considerable discount so that you can leave enough margin to account for any misinterpretations on your part.

More to come....