Value investor in the tradition of Benjamin Graham who buys unpopular assets when undervalued and insists on a margin of safety; his Boston partnership dates from 1982.
A long public record at Baupost and one book, Margin of Safety, that became a value-investing touchstone despite never being reprinted.
2 books of their own · 9 letters · 4 articles · 17 books they recommend
Avoid permanent loss: buy well below value and aim for absolute returns.
“Seth Klarman's 'Margin of Safety' is a good book about risk.” — Arnold Van Den Berg
Source: Van Den Berg on Margin of Safety as a book about risk
Recommended by: Arnold Van Den Berg, Frank Martin, Guy Spier and 6 others
Klarman was lead editor of the sixth (2008) and seventh (2023) editions.
Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor | Avoid permanent loss: buy well below value and aim for absolute returns. | 1991 | T2 | Arnold Van Den Berg, Frank Martin, Guy Spier and 6 others |
Security Analysis, Seventh Edition | Klarman was lead editor of the sixth (2008) and seventh (2023) editions. | 2023 | – |
Avoid permanent loss: buy well below value and aim for absolute returns.
“Some twenty years ago, Margin of Safety was published which spelled out why financial markets weren't, and never would be, efficiently priced and what we intended to do about it. I endeavoured to…” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on writing the book to be timeless
Also recommended by: Arnold Van Den Berg, Frank Martin, Guy Spier and 5 others
How to read financial statements sceptically and value bonds and stocks.
“We opened our investment partnerships for business in early 1983, a fledgling firm with an investment philosophy adopted straight from Graham and Dodd. We have stuck to the bedrock principles of…” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on founding Baupost on a philosophy taken straight from Graham and Dodd
Also recommended by: Christopher Bloomstran, Howard Marks and 10 others
Client letters through the dot-com bubble; value discipline written contemporaneously
“What a unique opportunity to traverse the Bubble and post-Bubble years with Frank Martin, exactly as he described them to his clients in real time. Speculative Contagion is sure to enlighten…” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on traversing the bubble years with Martin
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Warren Buffett
Safe and cheap investing: a security can be both lower-risk and higher-return.
Also recommended by: Guy Spier, Mohnish Pabrai
Treat stocks as parts of businesses and buy only with a margin of safety.
“What I really thought was, I'm just updating The Intelligent Investor for modern examples and a contemporary market.” — Seth Klarman
Source: Masters in Business — Transcript: Seth Klarman, The Baupost Group (Bloomberg Radio)
Also recommended by: Benjamin Graham, Christopher Bloomstran and 26 others
Where to find mispriced stocks: spinoffs, mergers, bankruptcies and restructurings.
“Joel Greenblatt's 'You Can be a Stock Market Genius' is tactical and includes some very specific and interesting strategies.” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on the book's tactical, specific strategies
Also recommended by: Dan Loeb, Guy Spier, Mohnish Pabrai and 5 others
How the Federal Reserve was argued into existence, from the 1907 panic to 1913.
The few investors who saw subprime mortgage bonds would fail, and bet against them.
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai and 4 others
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
How a hedge fund's bond bets on borrowed money lost $4.6 billion in four months.
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai and 6 others
Buffett's life from Omaha and Graham's class to building Berkshire Hathaway.
Also recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Christopher Bloomstran and 11 others
How the way organisations divide work blinds them, and how some break down silos.
“Gillian Tett's new book the Silo Effect, a thoughtful discussion of the downside of narrow specialisation.” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on Gillian Tett on the downside of specialisation
Incerto volume 4
“Nassim Taleb, author of the new book Antifragile, praises volatility and criticises those who would artificially damp it at great unseen cost. Taleb advises us to be 'anti-fragile'. This is exactly…” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on Taleb's praise of volatility and what Baupost strives for
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Nat Eliason and 24 others
Kahneman's synthesis of behavioral economics is the cognitive science underpinning every negotiation tactic. Anchoring, loss aversion, framing effects, and the planning fallacy — understanding why these biases operate, not just that they exist, makes you harder to exploit and more honest about your own irrationality.
“Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work that challenged a rational model of judgement and decision-making, recently published a remarkable account…” — Seth Klarman
Source: Klarman on Kahneman's account of his intellectual journey
Also recommended by: Andrew Wilkinson, Charles de Vaulx and 31 others
Sex evolved as a defence against parasites, and that shapes human mating.
“I love the Red Queen, evolutionary biology.” — Seth Klarman
Source: Masters in Business — Transcript: Seth Klarman, The Baupost Group, books segment
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Naval Ravikant, Nick Szabo
How the Oakland A's won on a small payroll by buying players the market undervalued.
Also recommended by: Joel Greenblatt, Mohnish Pabrai, Ev Williams and 1 other
Journalism written during four crises, from the 1987 crash to LTCM's collapse.
Also recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai
| Baupost Group letters (collected) | A collection of Baupost Fund letters opening with fiscal 1995, when the fund gained 7.91%, beating Treasury bills but trailing U.S. stock indexes on low equity exposure. | 2022 | Microsoft, General Motors | |
| Baupost Limited Partnerships 2021 year-end letter | 2021 | |||
| Baupost Group Q4 2019 letter | 4 2020 | |||
| Baupost Group Q4 2018 letter | 4 2019 | |||
| What I've Learned From Warren Buffett (twelve lessons) | Seth Klarman lists twelve lessons from Warren Buffett, arguing he is of interest for his integrity and ideas, not his wealth. | 2015 | ||
| Collection of Baupost Group letters, December 1995 - June 2001 | A collection of Seth Klarman's Baupost letters from December 1995 to June 2001. | 4 2011 | ||
| Opportunities for Patient Investors (Klarman-Zweig interview, Financial Analysts Journal) | Seth Klarman tells Jason Zweig at the 2010 CFA conference where patient investors find opportunities. | 2010 | ||
| The Forgotten Lessons of 2008 (twenty lessons, from the Baupost 2010 annual letter) | Seth Klarman lists twenty lessons of the 2008 financial crisis that investors have already forgotten, from Baupost's 2010 letter. | 2010 | ||
| MIT Remarks, October 20, 2007 (MIT Sloan Investment Management Conference speech) | Seth Klarman tells MIT in October 2007 that subprime losses and quant fund woes reveal extreme risk-taking across finance. | 4 2007 | 2007-10-20 |
| Opportunities for Patient Investors Paywall | Financial Analysts Journal | Research paper | 2010 |
| The Timeless Wisdom of Graham and Dodd (preface to Security Analysis, sixth edition) Not online | McGraw-Hill | Article | 2008 |
| MIT Sloan Investment Management Conference remarks | MIT Sloan | Article | 2007 |
| A Response to Lowenstein's Searching for Rational Investors in a Perfect Storm | The Journal of Corporation Law | Research paper | 2005 |
| The Investor Seth Klarman, in a Rare Interview, Offers a Warning. Davos Should Listen Paywall | The New Yorker | 2019 |