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At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.

Benjamin Graham

Instead of passing blithely over into that Promised Land, flowing almost literally with milk and honey, it may be our destiny to wander a full 40 years or more in the wilderness of doubt and divided sentiments.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Destiny Honey Milk Years
The story of Joseph in Egypt and of the seven fat and the seven lean years has passed into the homely wisdom of the ages; but our economic thinking seems to have lost contact with so simple and basic approach to prudent management of a nations welfare.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Egypt Seems Seven Simple Thinking Year
Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Experts Optimistic People
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
Do not let anyone else run your business
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Anyone Buisness Else Running
To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Looks People
In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: ‘This too will pass.’
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Men Phrases Wise
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
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
… 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
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
Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever; when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Achievement Forever Growth
Stock speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Matter Thinking Trying
It’s nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Earning Investing Ratios
The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Goods Modern World
Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Investment Thinking
You must never delude yourself into thinking that you’re investing when you’re speculating.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Faces Government Surplus
A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Bears Investing Wreckage
Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Arguments Gold Use White
High valuations entail high risks.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Risk Valuation
Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Evidence Investing People
Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Enthusiasm Long May Prejudice Time
The underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Change Intelligent Significant Sound
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
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

Emotional Long Running
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

At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.

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At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.

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