black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The defensive (or passive) investor will place chief emphasis on the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses. His second aim will be freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions.

Benjamin Graham

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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Errors Odds Safety
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
A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Much Pay Too
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
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Being Investing Probability Wrong
… the loss of public confidence in the financial community growing out of its own conduct in recent years. I insist that more damage has been done to stock values and to the future of equities from inside Wall Street than from outside Wall Street.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Controlling Games Investing
Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Optimism
The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Mountain Ordinary Vicissitudes
The volume of credit depends upon three factors: the desire to borrow, the ability to lend and the desire to lend.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Credit Desire Three
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
Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Gone Investing Sell
Both a priori reasoning and experience teach us that as as these funds grow larger the geometrical rate of growth by compound interest ultimately defeats itself.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Defeat Growth Teach
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 existence of such a war chest might go far to strengthen our prestige and frighten off any would be assailant.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Assailant Chest Prestige Strengthen War
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

The defensive (or passive) investor will place chief emphasis on the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses. His second aim will be freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The defensive (or passive) investor will place chief emphasis on the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses. His second aim will be freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Benjamin Graham Quotes