Benjamin Graham Quotes - Page 2

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

Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.

The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.

Mr. Market's job is to provide you with prices; your job is to decide whether it is to your advantage to act on them. You no not have to trade with hime just because he constantly begs you to.

Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.

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.

The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular - but when something goes wrong.

Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.

The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator's primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell.

At heart, "uncertainty" and "investing" are synonyms.

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

The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means ... that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase.

Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: 'This too will pass.'

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

Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.

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.

Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.

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

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions.

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

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

The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.