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The Value Is In The Investment Philosophy The value of this book is in the investment philosophies that Graham goes out of is way to state and restate into redundancy. As Graham states in the book, "The Intelligent Investor" focuses less on the technicalities of his analysis's, and more on the ideals behind them. These ideals include: patience in waiting for the right opportunites to appear, patience in ownership of a stock until it's true market value is recognized, evaluating a company and estimating it's 'intrinsic value' (what you would pay for it) searching for stocks that are undervalued and more. Most of the ideas he brings up all revolve around a central theme of having a "margin of safety" in all your investments. He also states that if you don't have the traits required to stick to these ideals, you would do best to stick with an index fund for your common stock investments. This book is recommended to anyone who is looking to become a more aggressive investor since it provides a basic foundation for you to build on. For all it's strengths, this book as well as "Securities Analysis" have a common weakness which is that the ways that Graham found 'value' investments are much more difficult to find today. Value investing has been around for half a century now and has recently been making a comeback because of the bursting of the tech bubble. As Graham also states, the more prevalent a certain approach to investing becomes, the more diluted its earnings potential becomes. Opportunities such as 'net-nets' (stocks whose market value fall below their book value) are extremely rare to find today. It is up to the reader to discern how he/she can take advantage and apply his ideas to the market today. (Which the best books usually do) A word of note. Most value investors point to Warren Buffet as evidence of the profitability of value investing although Buffet is not a purist and places just as great an emphasis on intangible assests (such as branding and management). Opportunites, such as his 8% stake in Coca-cola would have been missed by someone strictly adhering to the Graham-Dodd model. In short, even with its inevitable weaknesses, "The Intelligent Investor" is an important addition to the library of any person who wishes to become an aggressive investor.