Charles Brandes: Market Taught Me To Ignore It Mostly

I was very interested in economics and had embarked on an investment career in 1968. The late 1960s was a go-go era with a lot of hot new initial public offers (IPOs). The onset of the bear market in 1970 wiped out all these new concepts and the market was down 40-45%. One couldn’t have had a more stomach churning initiation. I didn’t know what to do as I didn’t have any guidance or an investing philosophy. I was still looking around and one day Benjamin Graham walked into the brokerage office, where I was working, to buy National Presto Industries. And since I was the designated person to greet incoming people, I got to interact with him. Soon after, when I paid a visit to his office, he kept asking me a lot of questions for which he already had the answers. For me, as a rookie, it was unbelievable that I was being asked questions to guide Benjamin Graham! I did have a few opinions even at that time, though.
Had you read any of his books before you met Graham for the first time?
I had read Security Analysis but not The Intelligent Investor. But after meeting Graham, of course I read The Intelligent Investor very carefully.
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