“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.”

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.

The purpose of this book is to supply, in the form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy.

The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.

Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.

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

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.

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

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.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.

The best values today are often found in the stocks that were once hot and have since gone cold.

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.

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.

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.

The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.

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

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

The best approach here, if at all possible, is to use supervisory and regulatory methods to restrain undue risk-taking and to make sure the system is resilient in case an asset-price bubble bursts in the future.

All economic movements, by their very nature, are motivated by crowd psychology.

We have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly make money by thus “following the market”. We do not hesitate to declare this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.

If fees consume more than 1% of your assets annually, you should probably shop for another adviser.

A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.