Seth Klarman – Prove You’re An Investment Connoisseur

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Seth Klarman – Prove You’re An Investment Connoisseur

Frederick Sheehan is selling copies of Seth Klarman’s Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor and  Philip Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits. Anyone, seriously interested in purchasing a copy should read this post and contact [email protected] if interested. Minimum price for purchasing both books is $1,500, please see more details on both books and condition below.

On offer are two of the most coveted books written by great investors. Phil Fisher, one of the “pioneer, formative thinkers in the growth school of investing” (quoting his son, Ken Fisher), wrote Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits in 1958. Seth Klarman, renowned value investor, wrote Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor in 1991.

Fisher’s was the first investment book to make the New York Times bestseller list. Using AbeBooks.com as a guide, a first edition book of this quality sells for $600.00 today.

(A description of this copy in book terms: “Harper & Brothers. 1958. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition, Later Printing, F-H stated on copyright page.”)

Seth Klarman’s Margin of Safety is both a first edition and the only edition. Rather than appearing on the New York Times bestseller list it sat in the warehouse, unloved and unread. The volume offered (“Harper Business. 1991. First printing of first edition. Book condition: Fine. Dust Jacket: Very good”) is listed on AbeBooks between $1800.00 (for a “good” copy) to $2950.00 (“Fine in a fine dust jacket”). The dust jacket looks to me “fine” (defined as: “As New but allowing for the normal effects of time on an unused book that has been protected. A fine book shows no damage”) but not being a bookseller, I’d rather be prudent in my estimation. (Full disclosure: there are other “fine” editions listed on AbeBooks.com between $4000.00 and $6000.00, and good luck to them.)

The pair are an ideal purchase by any investor. For instance, the High-Frequency Trading firm can place the books conspicuously in its waiting room. This could ally clients worries that the HFT firm knows nothing about investing. (It might even work.)

A more conventional reason for buying the pair is to read them in the form they were first published.

It is instructive to read what the authors were thinking in 1958 and 1991. Fisher and Klarman were developing their investment approaches. In both instances, the investment world was about to change significantly. (Fisher wrote his book just prior to the “Go-Go Years” and mass conglomeration which ended in the Nifty-Fifty crash . Klarman wrote his book in the early days of mass, central-bank, money printing and infinite credit for all which has not yet ended.)

It is also instructive that Fisher and Klarman never changed their basic approach. Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits emphasizes long-term investing. Fisher bought Motorola in 1955 and still held it when he died in 2004. Klarman wrote in his introduction: “Wall Street, the financial marketplace where capital is allocated worldwide, is in many ways a gigantic casino.” Far be it from me to speak for Seth Klarman, but I think it is fair to observe this basic premise has, since 1991, been amplified beyond our most feral imaginations.

 

photo 1 (3) photo 2 (3)More details and pictures below:

Seth Klarman
Margin of Safety.

Harper Business. 1991. First printing of first edition.

Book condition. Fine. Dust Jacket: Very good.

 

 

 

 

 

photo 2 (4)
photo 1 (4)photo 1 (4)
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits (1958 Edition with Dust Jacket)

 

Fisher, Philip A.

 

Item Description: Harper & Brother Publishers, 1958.

 

Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition. 1958 First Edition, Later Printing F-H stated on copyright page.

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