"Study the past record of the stock market, study your own capabilities, and find out whether you can identify an approach to investment you feel would be satisfactory in your own case. And if you have done that, pursue that without any reference to what other people do or think or say." --Benjamin Graham [Source]
Ben Graham's 1955 Senate Testimony (LINK)
I was reminded of the above after reading this comment from Warren Buffett at the 1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting:
What two years in this century has the Dow had the greatest overall gain? The two years in the 1900s are 1933, which most of you don’t think of as a banner year, and 1954. And in both of those years, the Dow was up over 50 percent, counting dividends.
In March of 1955, because of that, the fact that the Dow had gone up — bear in the mind that the high on the Dow was 381 in 1929 and it took 25 years before that was surpassed. And in 1954, the Dow went from, say, 280 up to 404, or something like that, just a little over 50 percent.
So what did they decide to do? They decided to have congressional hearings about it. And they did.
In March of 1955, they had hearings in the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, Chairman Fulbright. And my boss, Ben Graham, was called down to testify. And it’s fascinating reading. Bernard Baruch was there, all kinds of people.Where’s the value in value investing? [H/T @williamgreen72] (LINK)
Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays (LINK)
TED Talk: How to build synthetic DNA and send it across the internet | Dan Gibson (LINK)
How Rats Remake Coral Reefs - by Ed Yong (LINK)
The New Story of Humanity's Origins in Africa - by Ed Yong (LINK)
Several new discoveries suggest that our species didn’t arise from a single point in space. Instead, the entire continent was our cradle.The Long Now Foundation event -- Chris D. Thomas: Are We Initiating The Great Anthropocene Speciation Event? (video) (LINK) [also available as a podcast]
Related book: Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction [This book earned quite the praise from Stewart Brand: "...the best book on evolution since Darwin."]