Security Analysis: Principles and Technique.

GRAHAM, Benjamin & David L. Dodd.

$40,000.00

Item Number: 99745

New York: Whittlesey House/ McGraw Hill, 1934.

First edition, second printing of Graham and Dodd’s seminal work, considered the Bible of modern financial analysis. Octavo, original black cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Melbourne S. Moyer with the best wishes of Benj. Graham Jan 1935.” The recipient, Melbourne Moyer was a contemporary of Graham and a Wall Street trader at Fulton Trust Company of New York. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Signed examples of Security Analysis are of the utmost rarity.

Continuously in print through six editions, for more than 80 years, and with nearly a million copies sold, Security Analysis is indisputably the most influential book on investing ever written. Known as the investors' bible, it is as frequently consulted today as it was when it first appeared in 1934. The original words of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd--put to paper not long after the disastrous Stock Market Crash of 1929--still have the mesmerizing qualities of rigorous honesty and diligent scrutiny, the same riveting power of disciplined thought and determined logic that gave the work its first distinction and began its illustrious career. In 2015, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Security Analysis "is widely viewed as the text of modern value investing. The long-held idea is that some stocks trade significantly below an identified “intrinsic value” and can be bought at a discount, with a built-in margin of safety against a complete washout." In 2016, Fortune called the book "still the best investment guide" and noted its "extraordinary endurance." The article states that "Graham, the primary author, then an obscure professor and money manager, chose the Great Depression as the time to assert his faith in patient security analysis and long-term investing. Given that the market was in the throes of an epochal collapse, very few folks were interested in investing. But Graham had the courage to see through the moment." Fortune also argues that one reason the book remained popular is that "it proffered an irreplaceable approach to investment. Stocks were to be valued as a shares of a business, bought and sold on that basis. No one contemplating the purchase of a family farm pondered the market trend or the latest jobs report; so should it be with common stocks."