Security Analysis

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**Security Analysis**

Hardcover 1951
Author	Benjamin Graham & David Dodd
Language	English
Genre(s)	Finance
Publisher	McGraw-Hill
Released	1951, Re-Published February 2005
Pages	770
ISBN	ISBN 0-07-144820-9

Security Analysis, authored by professors Benjamin Graham and David Dodd of Columbia University, laid the intellectual foundation for what would later be called "value investing". The work was first published in 1934, immediately following unprecedented losses on Wall Street. In summing up lessons learned, Graham and Dodd chided Wall Street for its myopic focus on a company's reported earnings per share, and were particularly harsh on the favored "earnings trends". They encouraged investors to take an entirely different approach by gauging the rough value of the operating business that lay behind the security. Graham and Dodd enumerated multiple actual examples of the market's tendency to irrationally under-value certain out-of-favor securities. They saw this tendency as an opportunity for the savvy.

At bottom, Security Analysis stands for the proposition that a well-disciplined investor can determine a rough value for a company from all of its financial statements, make purchases when the market inevitably under-prices some of them, earn a satisfactory return, and never be in real danger of permanent loss. Warren Buffett, the only student in Graham's investment seminar to earn an A+, made billions of dollars by methodically and rationally implementing the tenets of Graham and Dodd's book.

Later editions of Security Analysis are still used as textbooks at Columbia University. Security Analysis also represents the genesis of financial analysis and fundamental analysis.

[edit] Domestic Editions of Security Analysis

1st ed. (1934) Whittlesey House (the trade division of McGraw-Hill) - LCCN: 34023635
- Black bound cover (1st printing) was printed by The Maple Press Co., York, PA, for a small distribution in the United States
- Maroon bound cover (2nd printing) was published that same year for sale abroad
2nd ed. (1940) McGraw-Hill - LCCN: 40013028
3rd ed. (January 1, 1951) McGraw-Hill (last edition while Graham & Dodd were faculty members of Columbia) - LCCN: 2005270180
4th ed. (1962) McGraw-Hill (last edition by Graham & Dodd) Charles Sidney Cottle (1910 - 1987) joins as coauthor - LCCN: 62017368
3rd ed. reprint (May 1976) McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-07-023957-6
5th ed. (January 1, 1988) McGraw-Hill (updated by Cottle, Murray, and Block) - ISBN 0-07-013235-6
reprint of orig. ed. (October 1, 1996) McGraw-Hill - ISBN 0-07-024496-0
reprint of orig. ed. (February 1, 1997) McGraw-Hill - ISBN 0-07-024497-9
2nd ed. reprint (October 10, 2002) McGraw-Hill - ISBN 0-07-141228-X
3rd ed. reprint (December 10, 2004) McGraw-Hill - ISBN 0-07-144820-9