Security Analysis
One line: Graham and Dodd's 1934 textbook that founded value investing — its 50th-anniversary event is the occasion for Buffett's anti-EMH speech.
Overview
Published in 1934 by Ben Graham and David Dodd, Security Analysis is, in David's words, a "textbook," "academic," "super thick, dense. It's not meant to be readable," and one he admits he hasn't read himself. Together with the later, more accessible The Intelligent Investor, it laid the foundation for systematic, fundamentals-based stock analysis (treating stocks as pieces of a business rather than tickets on a horse race) and gave the "value investing" school its name (Graham-and-Doddsville).
Why it's worth reading
No one in the episode recommends reading it outright; its weight comes from being the founding text of value investing and a load-bearing plot point across the trilogy. In 1984, Columbia Business School held an event marking the book's 50th anniversary, and Buffett used the occasion to deliver "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville": his systematic takedown of the efficient market hypothesis, built on the long-run outperformance of Graham's disciples. Charlie Munger's one-word verdict on EMH: "bullshit." Elsewhere, David jokes that Moby Dick is "his Security Analysis" ("It was the security analysis, if I needed the Intelligent Investor version of it"), a stray line that captures how the hosts regard the book: foundational but forbidding.
Where it comes from
[acquired-berkshire-1-en]: David on Buffett's Columbia years: "Now, Graham and Dodd together had written and published Security Analysis back in 1934, but that was a textbook. That was an academic. I haven't read it but it's super thick, dense. It's not meant to be readable." [acquired-berkshire-2-en]: the Superinvestors speech section: "At Columbia's 50th Anniversary event of the publishing of security analysis, he gives this talk where he just calls it The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville that gives this long talk eviscerating the efficient market hypothesis folks economists."