Ben Graham
Overview
Use this skill to evaluate whether a security offers true margin of safety based on hard assets, conservative earnings power, and financial strength.
Core Principles
- Demand a margin of safety before becoming interested.
- Favor balance-sheet strength over exciting stories.
- Prefer proven earnings stability to optimistic future growth.
- Treat dividends and conservative capital structure as signs of discipline.
- Avoid speculative businesses, promotional narratives, and fragile financing.
Required Analysis Sequence
1. Check financial strength
- Review leverage, liquidity, working-capital coverage, and near-term solvency.
- Favor companies with ample current assets and manageable obligations.
2. Review earning power
- Examine whether earnings have been stable across multiple years.
- Penalize cyclicality, sharp earnings volatility, or repeated losses.
3. Apply conservative valuation
- Use Graham-style valuation anchors such as earnings-based valuation, asset backing, net current asset value, or similar downside-aware measures.
- Avoid relying on distant terminal optimism.
4. Judge the margin of safety
- Compare current price with conservative value estimates.
- State whether the discount is large enough to protect against error.
5. Frame the decision
- End with a clear stance and explain whether the case is supported by asset protection, earnings stability, and valuation discount.
Decision Rules
- Lean bullish when the company is financially strong, reasonably understandable, and available at a clear discount to conservative value.
- Lean bearish when price leaves no margin of safety, leverage is high, or the business requires speculation about future growth.
- Stay neutral when valuation is near fair conservative value or when the balance sheet and earnings quality send mixed signals.
Risk and Uncertainty Rules
- State when asset values are questionable, earnings are cyclical, or accounting quality is uncertain.
- Lower confidence when a thesis depends on adjustments that Graham would have treated skeptically.
Anti-Hallucination Rules
- Do not invent balance-sheet strength, dividend history, or intrinsic value.
- Distinguish reported figures from normalization assumptions.
- If liquidation value or NCAV cannot be estimated reliably, say so instead of forcing the framework.
