Benjamin Graham Quotes

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Investing isn't about beating others at their game. It's about controlling yourself at your own game.

Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

The true investor... will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operation results of his companies.

If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.

A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.

we have complaints that institutional dominance of the stock market has put 'the small investor at a disadvantage because he can't compete with the trust companies' huge resources, etc. The facts are quite the opposite. It may be that the institutions are better equipped than the individual to speculate in the market.But I am convinced that an individual investor with sound principles, and soundly advised, can do distinctly better over the long pull than large institutions.

The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.

Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.

Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.

The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character

No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the "margin of safety" - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.

The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.

It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.

By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimize the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.

The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.

Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.

Stock speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.

To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.

The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.

Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.

Speculators often prosper through ignorance; it is a cliché that in a roaring bull market knowledge is superfluous and experience is a handicap. But the typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss

The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.

In the short-run, the market is a voting machine - reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability - but in the long- run, the market is a weighing machine.

Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.

All the real money in investment will have to be made as most of it has been in the past not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.

To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a true margin of safety is one that can be demonstrated by figures, by persuasive reasoning, and by reference to a body of actual experience.

There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.

The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.

By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people's mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.

We define a bargain issue as one which, on the basis of facts established by analysis, appears to be worth considerably more that it is selling for.

you may take it as an axiom that you cannot profit in Wall Street by continuously doing the obvious or the popular thing

Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

Cartels have spread and will spread as long as the world lacks an effective mechanism by which balanced expansion may be achieved without a resulting disruption of prices.

Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

It always seemed, and still seems, ridiculously simple to say that if one can acquire a diversified group of common stocks at a price less than the applicable net current assets alone - after deducting all prior claims, and counting as zero the fixed and other assets - the results should be quite satisfactory.

Evidently stockholders have forgotten more than to look at balance sheets. They have forgotten also that they are owners of a business and not merely owners of a quotation on the stock ticker. It is time, and high time, that the millions of American shareholders turned their eyes from the daily market reports long enough to give some attention to the enterprises themselves of which they are the proprietors, and which exist for their benefit and at their pleasure.

The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.

Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.