Welcome to a new feature at Webzine In Which. My name is Bartleby Dodd and I will be reporting on the financial world writ large. For those of a cynical bent, you are correct in guessing my real name is not Bartleby Dodd, but I thought a nom de cash might be fitting. Also, my current employers employ me to analyze companies, not comment on the movements of the Baht for a suspect audience. For those who are unfamiliar, David Dodd was the second half of the most famous twosome of the investing world: Graham and Dodd. Although Benjamin Graham receives most of the attention and accolades (justifiably), Dodd was a professor at Columbia who co-wrote the first book on security analysis, entitled....you guessed it: Security Analysis.

It is thanks to these two contrarian intellectuals that, in 1934, we "the public" became familiar with the idea of intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is the radical notion that a company or--more specifically—a part ownership of a company (a stock if you will) has an intrinsic value that wholly unrelated to its market value. And, Bartleby, well, I would prefer not to guess that most of you are unfamiliar with this inveterate soul. So, I pledge this semi-regular column will attempt to combine the persistence of Bartleby with the clear-thinking of Dodd. That will do for an introduction but, before I leave you, I would like to leave you with a few words of advice: