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Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

Benjamin Graham

It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Hundred Loss Taken
The qualitative factors upon which most stress is laid are the nature of the business and the character of the management. These elements are exceedingly important, but they are also exceedingly difficult to deal with intelligently.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Character Important Stress
I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history’s repeating itself on many different counts. You don’t get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of prices is not too high.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Different Simple Wall
In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Business Intelligent Running
For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some price they would be so dear that they would be sold.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Issue Issues Price Some
Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Average Good Man Management
There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

May Profit Wall
If General Motors is worth $60 a share to an investor it must be because the full common-stock ownership of this gigantic enterprise as a whole is worth 43 million (shares) times $60, or no less than $2,600 million.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Common Ownership Share
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Expansion Technique World
An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Opposites
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Economic Keys Littles
The people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Imperfection Men People
The most striking thing about Graham’s discussion of how to allocate your assets between stocks and bonds is that he never mentions the word “age”.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Age Assets Investing
Whether we like it or not, government intervention in the face of surplus is here to stay.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Faces Government Surplus
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Fall Investing Opportunity
THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Abuse Agreement Credit
Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Bad Company Good Investing Price Stock
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
The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Goods Modern World
The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Community Investing Memories
The idea of storage as a solution of economic problems at least has the support of common sense.It is diametrically opposed to the topsy-turvy Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning that has marked so much of our depression thinking and policy.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Common Sense Ideas Thinking
Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Ignored Investing Taken
Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock’s proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Crowd Following Intelligent Needs
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Optimism Swings
The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor’s own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right or at least valuable answers.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysts Answers Attitude

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

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Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

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