Benjamin Graham Building a Profession

by Stefan Zweig

A rare look at the early writings of a financial genius

Benjamin Graham articulated the fundamental principles of modern security analysis and launched one of the most successful and profitable schools of investing— value investing.

Benjamin Graham: Building a Profession presents a rare collection of the writings of Benjamin Graham, mostly drawn from those published in the Financial Analysts Journal. In this collection of 19 articles spanning some 30 years, readers will get a look at Graham’s transforming vision for creating a financial profession and a science of financial analysis.

Genres: Finance, Business

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2009

About the author

Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942.
Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren.
Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Reviews

[Jiri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains a lot of valuable wisdom, however I find Benjamin Grahams writing style difficult to follow.
Graham is praised and endorsed by financial heavyweights such as Warren Buffet, John Bogle and quoted by nobel prize winning economists not to mention all the students he taught and clients he invested for over his long career in investing and financial teaching. In the book Building a profession he details the creation of security and finance analyst. He appears to have created the profession or at least contributed heavily to it.
Many of the lessons from 100-50 years ago (1920-1970) are very much applicable today and he makes very interesting and valid points.
However - a lot of Grahams writing comes off as pompous and wordy often rambling on around the subject like a self important college professor rambling on boring the reader to sleep with long winded analogies using big words.
The book put me to sleep many times and I had a hard time finishing it, much like Security Analysis (which I was unable to finish) though The Intelligent Investor was much better.
Jason Zweigs intros and edits were much easier to read and a highlight of the book.

[László Dr. Solti-Tóth]

The editor is not Stefan Zweig, but Jason Zweig.

[Monzenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great compilation of articles by who is essentially the founder of the CFA Program. He espoused the need for analyst certification, and the series of articles definitely showed the important parts of an analyst's repertoire, from his perspective. Of course, value investing is at the center of his recommendations, but he allows for analysts to work on what works best for them. His constant plea would be to approach the process of security / financial analysis through the scientific method, and to allow analysts' recommendations to be judged. He also advocates for recognizing the asset-value side of a price assessment, and a speculative / forward-looking side of a price assessment - good advice even today. All in all a good read, I can see why the articles paint a picture of a pioneer.

(Nov 29 update) Rating remains the same. Book remains a classic in terms of charting the path of the financial analyst. Even the issues discussed either are still relevant today, or have their direct parallels. Benjamin Graham's clarion call for professionalism continues to be heard today.