Irving Kahn said: “During the Great Depression, I could find...

Irving Kahn said: “During the Great Depression, I could find stocks trading at tremendous discounts. I learnt from Ben Graham that one could study financial statements to find stocks that were a 'dollar selling for 50 cents’. He called this the 'margin of safety’ and it’s still the most important concept related to risk.”
Indeed, he uses the same approach today. “During the recent crash and in other sell-offs, Tom and I looked for good companies selling at a discount, which do surface if you’re patient. If the market is overpriced, an investor must be willing to wait.”
He added: “There are always good companies that are overpriced. A disciplined investor avoids them. As Warren Buffett has correctly said, a good investor has the opposite temperament to that prevailing in the market. Throughout all the crashes, sticking to value investing helped me to preserve and grow my capital.
“Investors must remember that their first job is to preserve their capital. After they’ve dealt with that, they can approach the second job, seeking a return on that capital.”