Exorcising the spectre of inflation

‘To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require stratospheric IQ, unusual business insight, or inside information. What is needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.'

Warren Buffett wrote this in 1974 in the foreword to Benjamin Graham’s classic work The Intelligent Investor, at a time when financial markets and world economies were experiencing scenarios not dissimilar to those we face today. Then there was war in the Middle East, Western economies were starting a painful structural transition after the growth of the 1960s, inflation was a threat to savings, interest rates were rising, the UK had a banking crisis and the spectre of China was beginning to loom. 40 years on, the parallels look uncanny, which is what makes Buffett’s word more relevan...