David Dodd
Encyclopedia
David LeFevre Dodd was an American educator, financial analyst, author, economist, professional investor, and in his student years, a of, and as a postgraduate, close colleague of Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham was an American economist and professional investor. Graham is considered the first proponent of value investing, an investment approach he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd through various editions of their famous book...

 at Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...

.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...

 (Black Thursday) almost wiped out Graham, who had started teaching the year before at his alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...

, Columbia. The crash
Stock market crash
A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors...

 inspired Graham to search for a more conservative, safer way to invest. Graham agreed to teach with the stipulation that someone take notes. Dodd, then a young instructor at Columbia, volunteered. Those transcriptions served as the basis for a 1934 book Security Analysis, which galvanized the concept of value investing
Value investing
Value investing is an investment paradigm that derives from the ideas on investment and speculation that Ben Graham and David Dodd began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis...

. It is the longest running investment text ever published.

Academic life

In 1916, Dodd received his Diploma
High school diploma
A high school diploma is a diploma awarded for the completion of high school. In the United States and Canada, it is considered the minimum education required for government jobs and higher education. An equivalent is the GED.-Past diploma styles:...

, High Street School(?), Martinsburg, WV. In 1920, he completed his Bachelor of Science
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

, at University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

. One year later, Dodd received his Master of Science
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...

 at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

From 1922 to 1925, Dodd was instructor of economics at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. From 1925 to 1930, Dodd became an instructor of finance. From 1926 to 1945, he was in charge of the business and economics courses. In 1930, he received his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. From 1930 to 1938, he was Assistant Professor of Finance, Columbia. From 1938 to 1947, he was Associate Professor, Columbia. From 1947 to 1961, he was Professor, Columbia. From 1948 to 1952, he was Associate Dean, Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...

. In 1961, he retired as Professor Emeritus, Finance, Columbia. On May 17, 1984, on the 50th Anniversary of publishing Security Analysis, Michael I. Sovern
Michael I. Sovern
Michael Ira Sovern was the 17th president of Columbia University. He is currently the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He is a noted legal scholar of Labor Law and an expert in employment discrimination....

, President of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, awarded David LeFevre Dodd a Doctor of Letters
Doctor of Letters
Doctor of Letters is a university academic degree, often a higher doctorate which is frequently awarded as an honorary degree in recognition of outstanding scholarship or other merits.-Commonwealth:...

, an honorary degree, for applying financial theories with brilliant results in a highly competitive world of investments. Columbia President Michael Sovern bestowed the honor during Columbia's 230th commencement
Graduation
Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the ceremony that is sometimes associated, where students become Graduates. Before the graduation, candidates are referred to as Graduands. The date of graduation is often called degree day. The graduation itself is also...

 exercises.

Professional life

From 1917 to 1919, he was US Navy during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

; rising from boatswain
Boatswain
A boatswain , bo's'n, bos'n, or bosun is an unlicensed member of the deck department of a merchant ship. The boatswain supervises the other unlicensed members of the ship's deck department, and typically is not a watchstander, except on vessels with small crews...

 to lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

. From 1921 to 1922, he was Research assistant for an economist at National Bank of Commerce, New York (now part of JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association
National bank
In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings:* especially in developing countries, a bank owned by the state* an ordinary private bank which operates nationally...

; see NYS banking history here). On August 9, 1924, he married Elise Marguerite Firor (b. Mar 22, 1898 - d. 22 June, 2001). In 1928, he advised private clients in investments. From 1950 to 1958, he was Limited partner, Newman & Graham Ltd. (an unregulated hedge fund
Hedge fund
A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...

). From 1958 to 1999, he was General partner, Graham-Newman & Co. (a regulated investment trust
Investment trust
An Investment trust is a form of collective investment found mostly in the United Kingdom. Investment trusts are closed-end funds and are constituted as public limited companies....

 formed in 1929).

Personal life

Dodd was a member of the following organizations: American Economic Association
American Economic Association
The American Economic Association, or AEA, is a learned society in the field of economics, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It publishes one of the most prestigious academic journals in economics: the American Economic Review...

, Social Science Research Council
Social Science Research Council
The Social Science Research Council is a U.S.-based independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines...

 (investment committee 1950–1956), American Finance Association
American Finance Association
The American Finance Association is an academic organization whose focus is the study and promotion of knowledge of financial economics. It was formed in 1939...

 (Vice President 1946–1947), New York Society of Security Analysts, Beta Gamma Sigma
Beta Gamma Sigma
Beta Gamma Sigma or ΒΓΣ is an honor society for business students and scholars. Founded in 1913 at the University of Wisconsin, it has over 650,000 members, selected from over 500 chapters in AACSB-accredited business schools...

, Phi Gamma Delta
Phi Gamma Delta
The international fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta is a collegiate social fraternity with 120 chapters and 18 colonies across the United States and Canada. It was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, and its headquarters are located in Lexington, Kentucky, USA...

, Alpha Kappa Psi
Alpha Kappa Psi
ΑΚΨ is the oldest and largest professional business fraternity. The Alpha Kappa Psi Fraternity was founded on October 5, 1904 at New York University, and was incorporated on May 20, 1905...

, and Phi Chi Theta.

Value investing

The phrases "Graham and Dodd," "value investing
Value investing
Value investing is an investment paradigm that derives from the ideas on investment and speculation that Ben Graham and David Dodd began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis...

," "margin of safety," and "intrinsic value
Intrinsic value (finance)
In finance, intrinsic value refers to the value of a security which is intrinsic to or contained in the security itself. It is also frequently called fundamental value. It is ordinarily calculated by summing the future income generated by the asset, and discounting it to the present value...

" — all biblical to value investors — are often used interchangeably when referring to an approach to investing. Despite the onset of modern portfolio theory
Modern portfolio theory
Modern portfolio theory is a theory of investment which attempts to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk, or equivalently minimize risk for a given level of expected return, by carefully choosing the proportions of various assets...

 (MPT) in the late 1950s — a theory that peaked throughout the 80s, gaining Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 recognition in 1990 (co-laureates: Harry Markowitz
Harry Markowitz
Harry Max Markowitz is an American economist and a recipient of the John von Neumann Theory Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences....

, Merton Miller
Merton Miller
Merton Howard Miller was the co-author of the Modigliani-Miller theorem which proposed the irrelevance of debt-equity structure. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990, along with Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe...

, William F. Sharpe) — Value Investing proved to be a formidable style that sharply defied MPT
Modern portfolio theory
Modern portfolio theory is a theory of investment which attempts to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk, or equivalently minimize risk for a given level of expected return, by carefully choosing the proportions of various assets...

. The University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 was at the center of MPT (see "quantitative analyst
Quantitative analyst
A quantitative analyst is a person who works in finance using numerical or quantitative techniques. Similar work is done in most other modern industries, but the work is not always called quantitative analysis...

") while Columbia
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...

 has been the Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...

 for Value Investing for 7½ decades. Many cracks in MPT are now well established, whereas the basics behind Graham & Dodd’s approach to Value Investing are as valid today as when they were first introduced.

Value Investors see securities as either priced correctly, under-priced, or over-priced. In contrast, MPT proponents insist that, by definition under the efficient market hypothesis
Efficient market hypothesis
In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient". That is, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made.There are...

, a realized price of a stock is the correct price. Value investor purists reject the usefulness of Capital Asset Pricing Model
Capital asset pricing model
In finance, the capital asset pricing model is used to determine a theoretically appropriate required rate of return of an asset, if that asset is to be added to an already well-diversified portfolio, given that asset's non-diversifiable risk...

 (CAPM), in part, because it wrongly extrapolates historical volatility as a proxy
Proxy (statistics)
In statistics, a proxy variable is something that is probably not in itself of any great interest, but from which a variable of interest can be obtained...

 for risk
Risk
Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...

. For example, if equity prices of a company fell 75%, assuming the underlying fundamentals of the company were solid, an MPT practitioner would view it as volatile (risky); whereas, a value investor would determine whether it was undervalued, and, if so, buy it reasoning, among other things, that the resulting downward risk is less than before. Therefore, value investors see MPT metrics — such as standard deviation
Standard deviation
Standard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...

, beta
Beta coefficient
In finance, the Beta of a stock or portfolio is a number describing the relation of its returns with those of the financial market as a whole.An asset has a Beta of zero if its returns change independently of changes in the market's returns...

 (relative standard deviation), alpha (excess return), and the Sharpe ratio
Sharpe ratio
The Sharpe ratio or Sharpe index or Sharpe measure or reward-to-variability ratio is a measure of the excess return per unit of deviation in an investment asset or a trading strategy, typically referred to as risk , named after William Forsyth Sharpe...

 (risk adjusted return) — as inadequate and even misleading.

Columbia resisted de-emphasizing Value Investing during the throes of the MPT renaissance, but the appeal of MPT seemed to be part of a larger movement, thrusting finance aspects of business education into higher echelons of academia. During about a 25-year period (1965–90), published research and articles in leading journals of the value ilk were few. Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely regarded as one of the most successful investors in the world. Often introduced as "legendary investor, Warren Buffett", he is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is...

 once commented, "You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat." Shortly after the death of David Dodd in 1988, Bruce Greenwald, a star professor at CBS
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...

, took a keen interest in Value Investing. He found the overwhelming success of Value investors difficult to dismiss. At the same time, reliable data that fortified Value Investing was solidifying, while MPT was showing some flaws. Professor Greenwald invigorated the academic aspects of what many in ivory tower
Ivory Tower
The term Ivory Tower originates in the Biblical Song of Solomon , and was later used as an epithet for Mary.From the 19th century it has been used to designate a world or atmosphere where intellectuals engage in pursuits that are disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life...

s erstwhile treated as a vocational discipline. As if everyone were realizing the success of Value Investing at the same time (a little EMH
Efficient market hypothesis
In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient". That is, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made.There are...

 first-mover humor), wide popularity spread among academicians and MBA students not only at Columbia, but around the globe.

MPT pundits argue that the Warren Buffett's long-term record is a statistical
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

 three- to five-sigma event
Fat tail
A fat-tailed distribution is a probability distribution that has the property, along with the heavy-tailed distributions, that they exhibit extremely large skewness or kurtosis. This comparison is often made relative to the ubiquitous normal distribution, which itself is an example of an...

 — that is, his success is probable, but not replicable with certainty.

Yet the success of numerous other investment funds and practitioners who applied value investing
Value investing
Value investing is an investment paradigm that derives from the ideas on investment and speculation that Ben Graham and David Dodd began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently developed in their 1934 text Security Analysis...

 theories weakened assertions attributing success to chance
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

. Because Value Investing rejects MPT and its use of sophisticated statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

, there's irony when MPT theorists attribute its success to tails
Standard deviation
Standard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...

 of standard deviation
Standard deviation
Standard deviation is a widely used measure of variability or diversity used in statistics and probability theory. It shows how much variation or "dispersion" there is from the average...

. Bruce Greenwald
Bruce Greenwald
Bruce Corman Norbert Greenwald OP, , is a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and Director of Research at FirstEagle Funds. He is, among others, the author of the books Value Investing: from Graham to Buffett and Beyond and Competition Demystified: A Radically Simplified...

 overhauled and relaunched the Value Investing curriculum at Columbia in the spring of 1994. Today, Value Investing enjoys broad appeal among academicians and investors around the world. Professor Greenwald is the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

's Graduate School of Business
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...

. David Dodd died September 18, 1998, aged 103, of respiratory failure
Respiratory failure
The term respiratory failure, in medicine, is used to describe inadequate gas exchange by the respiratory system, with the result that arterial oxygen and/or carbon dioxide levels cannot be maintained within their normal ranges. A drop in blood oxygenation is known as hypoxemia; a rise in arterial...

 at Maine Medical Center
Maine Medical Center
Maine Medical Center is a 637 licensed-bed teaching hospital located in Portland, Maine, United States with a staff of over 6,000 people. Founded in 1874, it is the largest hospital in northern New England with 27,000 inpatients, more than 500,000 outpatient visits and over 16,000 surgeries...

, Portland, Maine
Portland, Maine
Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...

. At the time of his death, various editions of the book he coauthored, Security Analysis, had sold over 250,000 copies. His daughter, Barbara Dodd Anderson
John Anderson (Cal Scale)
John Schow Anderson was a design engineer and entrepreneur in the model railroading industry....

(1932–2010) lived in Northern California and was a benefactor of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing.
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