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Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

Benjamin Graham

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

Controlling Games Investing
Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Principles Wall
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
It must be fundamentally wrong to reduce production of food and fiber while one-third of our population is still ill fed and ill clothed.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Clothed Feds Fiber Population
While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Accomplishment Investing Wall
The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Commodity Gold Past
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
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysis Promise Safety
Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies’ performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Character Giving Years
Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Drop Sells Stock Substantial
Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Successful Thinking
Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Issues Portfolios Quality
Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Bulls Levels Next
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysis Investing Issues
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Body Investment Safety
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Character Fashion Thinking
The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Mountain Ordinary Vicissitudes
Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Firsts May Ownership
Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Attitude Important Years
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
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Expansion Technique World
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 investor should be aware that even though safety of its principal and interest may be unquestioned, a long term bond could vary widely in market price in response to changes in interest rates.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Long Safety
Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Emotion Investing Investment
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
Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Adversity Should Teach
The ideal form of common stock analysis leads to a valuation of the issue which can be compared with the current price to determine whether or not the security is an attractive purchase.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysis Determine Investing Issues Valuation

Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

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Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

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Popular Authors

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