Benjamin Graham

Overview

Benjamin Graham was born in London in 1894 and moved to New York City with his family as a baby. His father died when Ben was young, and a financial panic in 1907 wiped out the family's savings, so he grew up knowing what it felt like to worry about money. He was a brilliant student who graduated from Columbia University at age 20 and turned down offers to teach there so he could work on Wall Street and support his mother. Graham lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash, and that painful lesson pushed him to learn how to judge what a company is really worth instead of guessing. In 1934, he and David Dodd published Security Analysis, a book that taught investors to study a company's financial statements carefully before buying its stock. In 1949, he wrote The Intelligent Investor for everyday readers.

Why He Matters

Graham is often called the father of security analysis, the careful, evidence-based approach that financial analysts still use today. He taught at Columbia for decades, where one of his students was a young Warren Buffett, who later called The Intelligent Investor the best book about investing ever written. Graham also pushed for analysts to earn a professional credential with real standards, an idea that grew into the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program. His story shows young people that a hard start can turn into a lifelong mission, and that the best decisions come from patient homework, not hunches.