Strong, thorough research is the most important part about owning stocks.

There’s one big underlying theme to this book, Intelligent Investor. It’s the one point that I believe Graham wants people to take home from this book.

Strong, thorough research is the most important part about owning stocks.

If you can’t - or aren’t willing to - put in a lot of time studying individual stocks, identifying ones that genuinely have potential to return good value to you over time, and keep careful tabs on those individual stocks, then you shouldn’t be investing in stocks.

Over and over again, Graham makes this point, in both obvious and subtle ways. He’s a strong, strong believer in knowing the company. If you don’t have clear, concrete reasons for buying a stock, then you shouldn’t be buying that stock, period.

What if you don’t have that time? This book was written before the advent of index funds, but I tend to think that broad-based index funds can be a reasonable replacement for the stock portion of your portfolio.