Like I said in my previous post, I’ve read The Intelligent Investor (2003) before. I began thumbing through it again. Four items in Jason Zweig’s Note at the beginning struck me in a way they didn’t the last time through, though they are quite obvious (pp. xii-xiii):

• The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
• Only by insisting on what Graham called the “margin of safety”–never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be–can you minimize your odds of error.
• Become a critical thinker who takes no Wall Street “fact” on faith.
• Finally, Graham became a master at researching stocks in microscopic, almost molecular, detail.

I tend to be an optimist, so I have my work cut out with the first item. The second simply augers for caution–and I can be cautious. I think I can take a pretty good stab at the third. Detail? I like digging. Will I like digging as much as Graham?

And you?