New Delhi, Jan. 29 -- I am sure most of you may not have heard of Edgar Lawrence Smith. It is unfortunate, though. I think he deserves to be more famous than he is currently.

Edgar Lawrence Smith's book Common Stocks as Long-Term Investments was published exactly one hundred years ago.

Now, here's the interesting bit.

He is one of the few authors who changed the central message of his book upon realizing that the original message had flaws. Yes, that's right.

While going in, Edgar wanted to argue that stocks perform better than bonds during inflationary periods and vice versa during deflationary periods.

Let me repeat that. Edgar believed that stocks outperformed during inflationary periods, whereas bonds performed better during defl...