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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.

Benjamin Graham

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

Crowd Following Intelligent Needs
To see how much a company is truly earning on the capital it deploys in its businesses, look beyond EPS to Return on Invested Capital (ROIC).
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Looks Return
At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Heart Investing Synonym
The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Essence Safety Unnecessary
Even defensive portfolios should be changed from time to time, especially if the securities purchased have an apparently excessive advance and can be replaced by issues much more reasonable priced.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Issues Portfolio Purchase
The purpose of this book is to supply, in the form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Adoption Book Purpose
If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Shopping
Nothing important on Wall Street can be counted on to occur exactly in the same way as it happened before.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Important Investing Wall
Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor’s own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Affected Investment Passing Temperament Years
It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Energy Loss Wall
In an ideal world, the intelligent investor would hold stocks only when they are cheap and sell them when they become overpriced, then duck into the bunker of bonds and cash until stocks again become cheap enough to buy.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Ducks Intelligent Investing
The thing that I have been emphasizing in my own work for the last few years has been the group approach. To try to buy groups of stocks that meet some simple criterion for being undervalued-regardless of the industry and with very little attention to the individual company.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Simple Trying Years
Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Challenges Intelligent Safety
The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Decision Investing Simple
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Risk Successful
Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Cheap Enterprise Enterprises Investing Stock

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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