Irving Kahn was the co-founder and chairman of Kahn Brothers Group Inc., a broker-dealer and investment adviser with about $1 billion under management.

Irving worked closely with Benjamin Graham over his career. He had the noteworthy opportunity of working as Graham’s teaching assistant at Columbia University Business School and also contributed to Graham’s bible on value investing, Security Analysis, by providing some statistical help. He was one of the founding members of New York Society of Security Analysts and Financial Analysts’ Journal and was among the first few applicants to take the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam.

Unfortunately, Irving Kahn died earlier this year aged 109.

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In this rare archive footage, Irving and his son, Tom Kahn discuss the principles of value investing. The duo also talk about what they look for in a potential investment and how investors should play to their strengths when looking for value.

Unknown speaker:Irving, a question that came up was whether value investing was an art, or science?

I Kahn: That’s an easy one. I’ve said it before, and we don’t always agree but it’s an art in the sense that you never saw a great painter that didn’t learn from a prodigy, or some master painter. And also, a great painter can paint some bad pictures too but it’s no science and all the kids that believe in the equations or rules that make perfect markets will learn as they get older.

Tom Kahn: If it were a science it would be replicable. You could put certain algorithms in the machine and it would pop out the answer. It doesn’t work that way. So, it has to be a science.