All investors from beginners to old hands should gain from the use of this guide as I have.
From the Introduction by Michael F. Price president Franklin Mutual Advisors Inc. Benjamin
Graham has been called the most important investment thinker of the twentieth century. As a
master investor pioneering stock analyst and mentor to investment superstars he has no peer.
The volume you hold in your hands is Graham's timeless guide to interpreting and understanding
financial statements. It has long been out of print but now joins Graham's other masterpieces
The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis as the three priceless keys to understanding
Graham and value investing. The advice he offers in this book is as useful and prescient today
as it was sixty years ago. As he writes in the preface if you have precise information as to a
company's present financial position and its past earnings record you are better equipped to
gauge its future possibilities. And this is the essential function and value of security
analysis. Written just three years after his landmark Security Analysis The Interpretation of
Financial Statements gets to the heart of the master's ideas on value investing in
astonishingly few pages. Readers will learn to analyze a company's balance sheets and income
statements and arrive at a true understanding of its financial position and earnings record.
Graham provides simple tests any reader can apply to determine the financial health and
well-being of any company. This volume is an exact text replica of the first edition of The
Interpretation of Financial Statements published by Harper & Brothers in 1937. Graham's
original language has been restored and readers can be assured that every idea and technique
presented here appears exactly as Graham intended. Highly practical and accessible it is an
essential guide for all business people--and makes the perfect companion volume to Graham's
investment masterpiece The Intelligent Investor.
