Buying stocks is essentially buying a part of the company. To sum it up so simply— Buffett's admiration for Graham makes total sense. In that era, he was practically a prophet. Even today, most people buying stocks are still just focused on the price fluctuations. If you can truly understand this yourself, a good teacher can save you a lot of detours. Meeting Graham was like the beginning of enlightenment for Buffett. When I used to read the story of 'buying the case and returning the pearl,' I thought, who could be that foolish? But in reality, most people are exactly that foolish— they can't even tell the difference between the case and the pearl.