Follow the Author

Seth A. Klarman

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor Hardcover – Box set, October 1, 1991

by Seth A. Klarman (Author)

4.5 60 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover, Box set

"Please retry"

—

$8,533.24

$1,988.77

Hardcover
from $1,988.77

3 Used from $1,988.77 1 New from $8,533.24 4 Collectible from $3,999.99

Investors are all too often lured by the prospect of instant millions and fall prey to the many fads of Wall Street. The myriad approaches they adopt offer little or no real prospect for long-term success and invariably run the risk of considerable economic loss - they resemble speculation or outright gambling, not a coherent investment program. But value investing - the strategy of investing in securities trading at an appreciable discount from underlying value - has a long history - has a long history of delivering excellent investment results with limited downside risk. Taking its title from Benjamin Graham's often-repeated admonition to invest always with a margin of safety, Klarman's 'Margin of Safety' explains the philosophy of value investing, and perhaps more importantly, the logic behind it, demonstrating why it succeeds while other approaches fail. The blueprint that Klarman offers, if carefully followed, offers the investor the strong possibility of investment succe

Print length

249 pages
Language

English
Publisher

HarperCollins
Publication date

October 1, 1991
Dimensions

6.75 x 1 x 9.75 inches
ISBN-10

0887305105
ISBN-13

978-0887305108
See all details

Highest ratedin this set of products
Benjamin Graham
38,196
Paperback
$16.54
$16.38 shipping
Lowest Pricein this set of products
Peter Lynch
10,506
Paperback
$10.41
Get it as soon as Monday, Jul 24
$15.44 shipping
Most purchasedin this set of products
Morgan Housel
36,722
Paperback
in Introduction to Investing
$14.99
$15.53 shipping
This item:
Seth A. Klarman
60
Hardcover
8 offers from $1,988.77
Joel Greenblatt
1,554
Paperback
$13.43
$15.40 shipping
Benjamin Graham
Hardcover
in Investment Portfolio Management
$80.75
Howard Marks
2,922
Paperback
$12.00
Get it as soon as Monday, Jul 24
$15.33 shipping
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Benjamin Graham
1,465
Hardcover
$68.74
$19.06 shipping
Peter Lynch
2,377
Paperback
$11.26
$15.53 shipping
Joel Greenblatt
4,346
Hardcover
$15.98
$15.44 shipping

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins; First Edition (October 1, 1991)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 249 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0887305105
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0887305108
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #135,740 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,921 in Business & Money (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 60 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Seth A. Klarman

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Mr. Klarman is the CEO and Portfolio Manager of The Baupost Group, L.L.C. He has had primary responsibility for managing the investments of Baupost since the Company was formed in May, 1982. Baupost uses a value discipline with an event-driven bias to find global opportunities in such diverse areas as publicly-traded and private equities, bankrupt and financially-distressed debt, and real estate.

Author of “Margin of Safety,” a book that outlines his value investment philosophy, Mr. Klarman was chosen as lead editor for “Security Analysis: Sixth Edition,” published in 2008. He is a 1982 graduate of Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, and received his Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Economics from Cornell University in 1979.

Mr. Klarman serves on the Board of Directors of the Broad Institute. He is also Vice Chair of Beth Israel Hospital’s Board of Managers and a member of their Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors at HBS, where he has been a senior lecturer on value investing, and was a 2011 recipient of the school’s Alumni Achievement Award. In 2020, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Mr. Klarman is co-chairman of The Klarman Family Foundation.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

60 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Poon King

Holy Grail of Investing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 7, 2007

Verified Purchase

I am an alumni of the Value Investing program at Columbia Business School and I heard Seth Klarman speak at one of our lectures, so I decided to get my hands on this book. After months of waiting I finally managed to read this book in my local library in a special locked room, since this book is #1 on the theft list. All I can say it is nearest to the Holy Grail of Investing as you can get. I have applied most of his principles to my own investments and the results have been nothing short of spectacular (albeit a short time frame). No wonder the author (who owns the rights) doesn't want to publish the book again. He wants to keep his methods a secret. Just look at Klarman's track record at Baupost!!

It is rumored that ex-CBS Value Investing alums such as Louis Bacon, Leon Cooperman, William Von Mueffling and even Warren Buffett has a copy. This book is worth its weight in gold.

68 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kamonpool jaroonwarodom

GREAT BOOK IN MY LIFE

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2021

Verified Purchase

Thank you very much. you are very good seller. The most important book change attitude in my life

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Matthew Mondanile

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

Excellent book and great service from the third party seller.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

zene gurley

Klarman

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2015

Verified Purchase

great book . a bit pricey but a great book.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Dennis G.

A masterpiece on value investing.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 25, 2022

One of the best books to understand the mindset of value investing. This is a must if you want to learn how to be a value investor. The book is so rich in ideas and concepts of value inesting, that you probably need to read it again after you finish it for the first time. A great book that every value investor should read once.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Dave Loeffel

Quick read, great examples

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 14, 2009

Verified Purchase

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get inside the mind of one of the great practitioners of value investing.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Vero

Too general. Not enough details. Subpar overall.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 6, 2011

Warren Buffett once said that value investing can't be taught. If the concept does not resonate with you the first time that you are exposed to it, it probably never will and you will never become a true value investor. So if you are ready to pay close to $1,000 for a book on value investing, I am afraid that the Chairman was right one more time and very little enlightenment will come from reading this book.

Joke apart, the book is decent not great. I would recommend "The Intelligent Investor" and other books by Joel Greenblatt and Bruce Greenwald over it.

The book is divided in three parts: (1) why it is hard to make money in the markets, (2) what is the philosophy of value investing, (3) where to look for value investing opportunities.

The first part addresses the common themes of why speculators lose money, why Wall Street is tilted against you, and why indexing will only deliver subpar results. The author concludes that only value investing will deliver solid profits in the long run while limiting your downside risks.

The second part elaborates on the philosophy of value investing. It revisits the ideas of "Mr. Market" proposed by Ben Graham and the analogy between baseball and investing made by Warren Buffett. "Investing is like a pitching game where the referee does not keep track of balls and strikes, strikes in particular. Just swing when the perfect pitch that you can handle comes along". The core principles of value investing are then discussed. It is a bottom up approach where the investor focuses on absolute risk and downside risk. Finally, three valuation methods are briefly examined.

The third and last part of the book gives examples of where to look for value investing opportunities. The usual themes of spin-offs, arbitrage, and bankruptcy are visited one more time.

So who should read this book? Perhaps someone who starts his investment career and would like to read a general audience book about value investing. Someone already familiar with the concept will not learn much from the book especially because there are very few concrete examples about the topics discussed.

The lack of example is in my opinion the main weakness of the book. Value investing is after all not a difficult concept to understand, albeit few people follow the strategy in practice. So the marginal contribution of a book on value investing that does not delve into details can only be limited.

I would rather suggest books by Ben Graham. "The Intelligent Investor" to start; "How to Interpret Financial Statements" to continue; and "Security Analysis" for an in-depth treatment of the topic of valuation. I also enjoyed reading books by Joel Greenblatt "You can be a stock market genius" or by Bruce Greenwald "Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond". Both authors provide clear illustrations of value investing at work.

Good luck in your quest for betterment and knowledge and by the way, the book is available free on-line. So no need to spend the $1,000 unless you want it as a collectible.

65 people found this helpful

Helpful

A Primer on Value Investing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 20, 2018

Seth Klarman through his Baupost Fund is one of the greatest investors of the current generation, perhaps of all-time. This 1991 book is an investing classic, so much so that it sells for $780 on the secondary market. The key insight for most value investors is the all investments must have an inherent margin of safety. That means looking at the downside before looking at the upside. The notion of risk is asymmetric, not the standard deviation of returns as modern portfolio theory suggests. For example for any given stock under modern portfolio risk is independent of price; for a value investor risk is extraordinarily dependent upon price.

Klarman is focused on absolute performance, not relative performance. Thus unlike the bubbleheads on CNBC he doesn’t have to be invested all of the time. He is rightly skeptical of Wall Street research and the exotic products their investment bankers come up with.

The key earnings metric for Klarman is rightly free cash flow. It is not earnings per share and it is not EBITDA. Depreciation is real and so too are capital expenditures which do not enter the income statement.

The reader has to remember that this book was written in 1991 against the backdrop of the 1987 crash, the junk bond collapse and the 1990 bear market. He is critical of newly issued junk bonds (high yield in today’s terminology). Little did he realize that 27 years later high yield would dominate the new issues. He is also critical of the index funds that now dominate today’s stock market. For the average investor index funds make a great deal of sense.

Why? Simply put the average investor doesn’t have the talent or the time to be a value investor like Klarman. To be another Seth Klarman takes more than a few brains and much hard work.

“Margin of Safety” is written inclear and concise language. My two criticisms are that there are far too few examples of value investing in action and it is obviously dated. Nevertheless the lessons to be learned from reading the book are timeless.

57 people found this helpful

Helpful

Follow the Author

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor Hardcover – Box set, October 1, 1991

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Product details

Videos

About the author

Seth A. Klarman

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Follow the Author

Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor Hardcover – Box set, October 1, 1991

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Product details

Videos

About the author

Seth A. Klarman

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries