Book · 1934
Security Analysis
by Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham's 1936 manual for dissecting a balance sheet, now mostly cited as proof that the method he later disowned still has its uses.
What does Reddit think of Security Analysis?
Security Analysis gets 20 mentions across 7 years, with r/investing carrying 18 of them and r/Bogleheads contributing the remaining 2. That concentration says something: this is a practitioner's book, not a hobbyist's. The most-upvoted comment (↑316) is the pivotal one — it quotes Graham himself saying he was no longer an advocate of the elaborate analytical techniques the book codifies. That's the shadow the book lives under on Reddit. r/Bogleheads surfaces the Buffett angle: even Berkshire Hathaway can't execute Graham-style value investing at scale anymore because markets are more efficient and the capital requirements are too large. Still, r/investing regulars include it in serious reading lists alongside The Intelligent Investor and Margin of Safety, usually as the hardest and most technical of the three. The ↑49 comment is the honest take: most people who start it don't finish it, drift back to index funds, and feel fine about the choice.
Community feedback & reader fit
Themes
- · value investing methodology
- · Graham's own disavowal of elaborate security analysis
- · market efficiency and its limits
- · intrinsic value calculation
- · the gap between theory and scalable practice
Common praise
- + The intrinsic value formula gives readers a concrete place to anchor their thinking about growth and earnings.
- + r/investing treats it as the original source text for value investing vocabulary that everything else borrows from.
- + Citing the 1934 definition of an investment operation still lands in threads where people conflate investing with speculation.
Common criticism
- − Graham himself later said the techniques in the book don't reliably surface superior opportunities anymore.
- − The Bogleheads thread points out that even Buffett operates under constraints that make Graham-style stock-picking impractical at scale.
- − Readers on r/investing who get 70% through it tend to conclude their time is better spent on index funds.
Who it's for
You've already read The Intelligent Investor and want the source material it simplified. You're serious enough about valuation to work through dense chapters on balance sheets and bond indentures, knowing the payoff is vocabulary and frameworks rather than a ready-made system. If your honest goal is beating the market, the ↑316 comment from r/investing will give you pause: Graham himself walked back this book's core premise. Come for the history and the original definitions; stay skeptical of the promised returns.
Mentions over time
Top subreddits
Which Reddit comments matter for Security Analysis?
Top-upvoted quotes across the subreddits where this book is mentioned. Click through to read the full thread.
“This. He was talking about **Security Analysis** from 1936. Graham himself died in 1976. Also we should know about the context of Graham's words and emphasize what "useless" is. >*“I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunitie…
“>Hopefully this wasn’t too boring a post It could be more concise. I could write reams of stuff about compounded growth and value investing, but I don't because I know my audience. Condense this and give it some structure, immediately summarize your thesis. I'll give you perhaps the greatest exa…
“Buffett himself has said that the sheer amount of capital he has to deploy often puts him at a disadvantage these days because it's hard to move the needle on Berkshire's portfolio short of buying all or very large chunks of large companies. Not to mention that today's markets are much more efficie…
“I'm 70% through Intelligent Investor, started Margin of Safety, and have leafed through Security Analysis by Graham/Dodd, and from what I've read and how much time I wasted looking at $GME stuff a couple weeks ago, I think it's a better use of my time to stick to index funds and use my time doing ot…
“>So, he was managing a big portfolio and getting his part from profits? but on his own name or for the firm? How one would be able to do that know? You can get a lot of information about the market at the time from Buffett's biography The Snowball. It's a long book but it's in depth. As far as mod…
“Was curious about this since I had never heard of Ben Graham's intrinsic value formula. For those in the same boat as me, it is: ``` V = EPS * (8.5 + 2g) * 4.4 / Y ``` with ``` EPS = the company’s last 12-month earnings per share 8.5 = P/E base for a no-growth company g = reasonab…
““An investment operation is one which, on thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.” - Benjamin Graham, Security Analysis (1934)
“Don’t follow anyone. Read some books instead. Here’s a list to get him started: **Behavioral/Psychology** - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini - Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind by Guy Clayton - What it Takes: Seven Secrets of Success from the World's Greatest Professional Firms by…
Convinced? Pick up Security Analysis
What else does r/investing read?
Other books mentioned in the same sub, ranked. Shared-sub overlap with this title breaks ties.
The Intelligent Investor
Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham's 1949 framework for distinguishing investment from speculation, cited 100 times on Reddit by people still arguing whether it applies to today's markets.
The Simple Path to Wealth
JL Collins
A retired fund manager distills 40 years of index investing into one rule: buy VTSAX, ignore the noise, and wait.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Burton G. Malkiel
Burton Malkiel's 50-year argument that you can't beat the market, backed by data, and Reddit's most-cited reason to stop stock-picking.
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
John C. Bogle
John Bogle's case for index funds in 200 pages: own the whole market, pay almost nothing, and wait — cited 262 times on Reddit and counting.
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Robert T. Kiyosaki
Tracked Reddit references and selected source excerpts for Rich Dad Poor Dad.
The Psychology of Money
Morgan Housel
Morgan Housel paid off a 3% mortgage early and calls it his best money decision ever — 209 Reddit mentions say the paradox is the whole point.
Security Analysis — frequently asked
Is Security Analysis still useful if Graham himself said he stopped believing in it?+
Depends on what you want from it. The ↑316 r/investing comment makes the disavowal hard to ignore — Graham explicitly said he no longer advocated elaborate security analysis for finding superior opportunities. But r/investing still includes the book in serious reading lists for the foundational vocabulary and the analytical framework, not as an operational manual. If you want a working system, look elsewhere. If you want to understand where value investing terminology comes from, it earns its place.
What does Reddit actually say about Security Analysis compared to The Intelligent Investor?+
The Intelligent Investor comes up more often in the same threads, and the ↑49 r/investing comment is representative: most readers encounter Security Analysis third or fourth in a reading sequence, after The Intelligent Investor and Margin of Safety, and find it the hardest and least actionable of the group. It gets recommended as a completionist move, not a starting point. The 20 total Reddit mentions over 7 years reflects that positioning.
Does Security Analysis hold up given how much more efficient markets are today?+
r/Bogleheads (2 mentions) surfaces the Buffett argument directly: markets are more efficient now, and deploying enough capital to matter makes Graham-style stock-picking structurally harder. That's not a fringe take — it's the Berkshire Hathaway problem. The book's techniques may still work for small portfolios, but the Reddit consensus leans toward index funds for anyone without the time to do full-scale analysis.
Should I read Security Analysis or just use Graham's intrinsic value formula?+
The ↑47 r/investing comment reproduces the formula (V = EPS × (8.5 + 2g) × 4.4 / Y) with full variable definitions, and that comment exists precisely because most people never open the book but want the punchline. If the formula is your goal, you already have it. The book earns a read only if you want to understand the reasoning behind the inputs and why the 8.5 base P/E figure exists at all.