Buffett's legendary defense of value investing. He presents statistical evidence that superior investment performance is not due to chance, but to following Graham & Dodd's value principles.
In 1984, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd's "Security Analysis", Warren Buffett returned to his alma mater, Columbia Business School, to deliver this now-legendary speech. At the time, the academic finance world was enamored with the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), which argued that beating the market was impossible. Buffett set out to prove them wrong.
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This speech single-handedly revived interest in value investing at a time when academic finance had all but declared it dead. By presenting the track records of investors who followed Graham & Dodd (Walter Schloss, Tom Knapp, Ed Anderson, Bill Ruane, Charlie Munger, and Buffett himself), Buffett showed that superior returns were not luck — they were the result of a disciplined, rational approach. The speech is now required reading at every major business school.