The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book On Value part 28. The purpose of this book is to supply, in a form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy. Comparatively little will be said here about the technique of analyzing securities; attention will be paid chiefly to investment principles and investors’ attitudes. We shall, however, provide a number of condensed comparisons of specific securities - chiefly in pairs appearing side by side in the New York Stock Exchange list in order to bring home in concrete fashion the important elements involved in specific choices of common stocks | 256 Commentary on Chapter 9 As the investment consultant Charles Ellis puts it If you re not prepared to stay married you shouldn t get married. 16 Fund investing is no different. If you re not prepared to stick with a fund through at least three lean years you shouldn t buy it in the first place. Patience is the fund investor s single most powerful ally. 16 See interview with Ellis in Jason Zweig Wall Street s Wisest Man Money June 2001 pp. 49-52. CHAPTER 10 The Investor and His Advisers T he investment of money in securities is unique among business operations in that it is almost always based in some degree on advice received from others. The great bulk of investors are amateurs. Naturally they feel that in choosing their securities they can profit by professional guidance. Yet there are peculiarities inherent in the very concept of investment advice. If the reason people invest is to make money then in seeking advice they are asking others to tell them how to make money. That idea has some element of naïveté. Businessmen seek professional advice on various elements of their business but they do not expect to be told how to make a profit. That is their own bailiwick. When they or nonbusiness people rely on others to make investment profits for them they are expecting a kind of result for which there is no true counterpart in ordinary business affairs. If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled. It is when the investor demands more than an average return on his money or when his adviser undertakes to do better for him that the question arises whether more is being asked or promised than is likely to be delivered. Advice on investments may be obtained from a variety of .
