Graham has been the teacher of most best gaining investors and this book shows you how to think about investing.
I mean that also if his consels are very good ,of course after 60 years you will not discover in them anything new to the market, but if you follow him in his way of thinking, than you will probably find your way to wealth, nobody else that I know succeeded better in this than Graham.

Warren Buffett introduced this edition of The Intelligent Investor by remarking that when he first read the book as an undergrad he thought then that it was the best investment book ever written, and many years later, after Benjamin Graham had died, Mr. Buffett still thought that The Intelligent Investor was the best investment book ever written, even today. After reading this extended meditation on caution before the stock market, hot tips, and pseudo-quantitative information, I have to concur with Mr. Buffett's assessment.

Although much has been said about this text, after reading it, I now feel that the great many that trumpet its merits simply do not understand its lessons or even its value. Many credit this book, and Graham and Dodd's earlier Security Analysis, for spawning the value investing movement. While true, this book represents something much more. It does not, as most people insist, put forth a quantitative approach to investing. That, unfortunately, is a gross distillation of some of the ideas contained in the book. Rather, it presents a way of thinking about investing, and emphasizes the approach to investing operations, especially with regard to safety, expectations and temperament.

Now some have criticized the book as being quite dated and irrelevant to today's fast moving and turbulent market, but these criticisms must be placed in proper context. This book was written in 1971 and was several revisions removed from the first edition, which appeared in 1949. Sadly, Mr. Graham passed away in 1976, and as such, this book, in its final revision, represents a kind of magnum opus written by a market observer who had seen more than his share of financial foolishness, from the stock markets of the Roaring Twenties to the drama and suspense of the Go-Go Sixties, with a few world wars, social upheavals, oil shocks and financial calamities added just to liven things up a bit. Furthermore, many have said that the examples are dated and no longer applicable, and to this I reply: change the dates and the company names and then ask yourself how the text reads.

Incidentally, every single tenet of modern-day financial planning is presented here, first, and many so-called 'financial innovations' (like the index fund) began as ideas rigorously considered in the text. Graham's ideas laid the foundation for indexing, now a popular way to invest, and he also gave what I believe to be the best treatment of the thorny problem of asset allocation.

However, with this text, Graham told the reader something that no one since has even dared to do today. He told the reader what he or she could reasonably expect to accomplish when taking certain courses of action with respect to investing. Moreover, he devoted a lot of space and thoughtful consideration, backed by both years of observation and experience, to what could go (horribly) wrong when investing. Every other book since has devoted lots of space to notable instances of things going right, playing these up as an incentive to divorce you from your funds.

There is a level of honesty and clarity throughout The Intelligent Investor that many looking to get rich quick will find both boring and intimidating. Paradoxically, the text won't make any sense to most readers until they've lost their shirts picking stocks. Only then will they be ready to read this book and understand what it has to say. Although Graham never tells you how to make a million, he offers good advice on how to keep your money. Nor does he tell you which stocks are the hot stocks, or even how to trade your way to wealth. What he does tell you, however, is to beware those who would substitute numerical extrapolations for hard evidence, and never allow boundless optimism to replace jaded caution. This book makes every attempt to show both sides of the coin, and you always get the whole picture, not just the better half.

In sum, anyone looking to invest with safety foremost in mind, and willing to think about the moves they make and the reasons for making them should read this book. For those looking to speculate, I can only say: in the long run, expect to lose money.

the intelligent investor is a great book.the book does not give this make a million over night bs ,but it provides insightful ideas on investing logically via finding high earning power companies at a huge discount.Thus, this book is a great read for any one interested in value investing.

The issue is how to make money on the stock market.

The conclusion is that if you have the discipline and follow the advise with rigour, you will make money on the stock market. It is not for a day trader but a genuine investor.

There are many pieces of sound advice. One of the recommended easy and time saving way to pick a stock: buy the stock of Dow Index companies with minimum P/E ratio.

It is a classic.

Before deciding on whether to buy this book or not, one should take into account that even this version is 30+ years old, and that the original version was written over 50 years ago. Though successful investing for the greater part is founded on principles (which are timeless), the content, style and writing of the book is old-fashioned, which makes it a bit tedious to read.

Stock market history may be interesting, but the book continuosly refers to the 1971 - 1972 stockmarket, which is quite a bit out of date. There have been considerably better books written on investing since then (Hagstrom: "The Warren Buffett way", Lynch x 2: "Beating the Street, One up on Wall Street").

Yet there are still interesting chapters in the book, and some valuable pieces of advice as well. The book contains what Buffett views as the most valuable words ever written on investing: "Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike". Other valuable pieces of advice include why one should be careful about investing in IPOs.

Since one basically only has to understand and follow a couple of basic laws to become successful as investor (and those laws has nothing to do with beta or APT) and this book contains some of them, it can be recommended, with some reservation. But it is tediouos to read and better books on investing have been written since 1973.