The Personal Portfolio

And my final thoughts on The Intelligent Investor.

Allegory of Fortune, Lorenzo Lippi, year unknown, oil on canvas (Ulster Museum, Belfast)

(Apologies for the late post this week; we’ll be back on schedule starting Tuesday)

Poor old Granddad, I laughed at all his words
I thought he was a bitter man
He spoke of women's ways
They'll trap you when they use you
Before you even know
For love is blind and you're far to kind
Don't ever let it show

The Faces — Ooh La La (1974)

Before jumping straight into the quarterly personal portfolio discussion, I wanted to share some thoughts after finishing my re-read of Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor.

As I said before, I picked the book back up after several years because I thought there would be some interesting perspectives on investing in a rising or higher interest rate environment. The takeaway lessons didn’t come anywhere close to answering those questions. Sure, Graham wasn’t afraid to invest in debt with the right yield and trading at the right price, but those thoughts weren’t too dissimilar to his thoughts on how to buy stocks or any other type of appreciating asset.

There wasn’t as much in the book about analyzing companies as I remembered. How to determine the quality of the business (outside some balance sheet and income statement quirks) wasn’t discussed much at all.

Perhaps the most crucial lesson that I probably missed on my first read was how much Graham stressed avoiding mistakes.

Admittedly, it’s not a message that early investors want to hear. When we’re still wet behind the ears, we want to hear optimistic affirmations on how we, too, can accumulate wealth and how to do it. The “beware the pitfalls” message doesn’t jive with the doe-eyed view of stocks. Graham comes off as a bitter old Grandfather warning us of wicked women (maybe not the most apt metaphor considering Graham’s personal history).

And yet, it is probably the message that more people should hear early in their investing journey, and everyone should be reminded of periodically.

I’m picking up Philip Fisher’s Common Stocks, Uncommon Profits next if you want to follow along with me.

And now for the personal portfolio update.

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