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👑 Legends of Investing · Lesson 1 of 13 · 8 min

Benjamin Graham — The Father of Value

📚 In decades of teaching at Columbia, Benjamin Graham reportedly gave exactly one A+. The student: a young Warren Buffett. The idea that earned it: a stock's price and a stock's worth are two completely different numbers — and fortunes are made in the gap.

💡 Key idea

Margin of safety = buy at a discount to intrinsic value. Risk control over excitement.

🧠 Why it matters

Graham taught that a stock isn't a ticker symbol — it's a piece of a real business. His big idea: figure out what the business is WORTH, buy below that, and wait. He wrote 'Security Analysis' (1934) and 'The Intelligent Investor' (1949) — still the value investing bibles today.

🌍 In the real world

🏫 At Columbia in 1950, a 20-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, sat in Graham's class and got the only A+ Graham ever gave. That student was Warren Buffett. He later called Graham the second-most influential person in his life — after his father.

📌 Takeaways

  • Stocks = pieces of real businesses
  • Margin of safety = buy below true value
  • His books still relevant 75+ years later

✅ Test yourself

What's Benjamin Graham known as?
  1. The Bond King
  2. The Father of Value Investing
  3. The Day Trader
  4. The Tech Visionary

Answer: B · The Father of Value Investing

Graham essentially invented value investing as a discipline through his 1934 book Security Analysis.

What's a 'margin of safety'?
  1. A stop-loss order
  2. Buying a stock at a discount to its real value, so you have room to be wrong
  3. An emergency fund
  4. A type of insurance

Answer: B · Buying a stock at a discount to its real value, so you have room to be wrong

Margin of safety means you buy with enough discount that even if you're wrong about the value, you don't lose money.

Who was Graham's most famous student?
  1. Charlie Munger
  2. Warren Buffett
  3. George Soros
  4. Peter Lynch

Answer: B · Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett got the only A+ Graham ever gave at Columbia Business School. Buffett went on to apply Graham's principles for 70+ years.

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