Margin of Safety (Klarman)
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Margin of Safety (Klarman)
| Full title | Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor |
|---|---|
| Author | Seth A. Klarman |
| Published | 1991 |
| Pages | 249 |
| Recommended | 4 times |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Klarman’s one book starts from the ways investors lose money — mandate pressure, benchmark-relative thinking, the need to be fully invested — and only then asks what a process built to avoid those looks like: absolute rather than relative valuation, a bias toward cash when nothing qualifies, and a hunt in the places institutions cannot go. |
Margin of Safety (Klarman)
Where I heard about it
- On Investing Book List (Gavin Baker), Gavin Baker’s May 2020 investing book list (under Investing, one of his italicized favorites).
- On Jay’s investing reading list — a Google Sheet of 92 books by discipline, saved in Kyle’s Roam notes on April 15th, 2020 (Jay’s Investing Reading List). Jay’s reason: “Obviously a famous book on value-investing methodology - read a PDF online”
- Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the Himalaya Capital bibliography, in the Value Investing, Finance, and Capitalism section — the practitioners’ canon of Graham, Buffett, Fisher, Marks and Klarman. Klarman is the entry that makes risk-aversion the starting premise rather than a constraint. Li Lu lists it as HarperCollins, 1991.
- Unknown — saved to my “Things to read” note, October 2023, as a link to a PDF upload of the book on Scribd (not archived).
About this edition
The hunting grounds Klarman names are bankruptcies, liquidations, spin-offs and thrift conversions. The book went out of print and became a collector’s item, which is why copies trade for four figures; the argument itself is a plain restatement of Graham’s title phrase as an operating discipline.
Connections
- Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the list this came from.
- Seth Klarman — the author, and Baupost’s record is the argument’s evidence.
- Margin of Safety — the concept page for the Graham idea this book is named after.
- Value Investing, Risk — the tradition and the premise.
In the Library of Alexandria
- Margin of Safety (Seth Klarman) — Full Text — the full text is in the library.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.