Is "The Intelligent Investor" a good book for beginners?

I am a self-taught value investor learning how to invest from books, articles, videos and podcasts.

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I read "The Intelligent Investor" years after I learned value investing. I wil admit that I found the book hard to read and if I was not a value investor, I would not have read it. Yes, I read it to find out what the hype was all about.

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This is not a book I would recommended to any newbie wanting to learn value investing. There are better books nowadays that presents the value investing concepts better.

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Besides if you want to learn value investing, there are 3 skills you have to develop

• how to analyze companies. This is like a mini-MBA course
• how to value them. Damodaran and Penman have much comprehensive books
• how to mitigate risk from a permanent loss of capital perspective. I have not found any books on this and what I am doing is based on my own experience.

So you can understand why I said that "The Intelligent Investor" is not meant for the newbies.

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Of course, I like to think that my own value investing book is better for the newbies as I covered all the 3 skills with case studies and worked examples.

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