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The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.

Benjamin Graham

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
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.
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Adversity Should Teach
Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
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Hat Investing Winter
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
At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Heart Investing Synonym
The true investor… will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operation results of his companies.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Attention Investing Pay
By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Destiny Discipline Swings
Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Optimism
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
Speculators often prosper through ignorance; it is a cliché that in a roaring bull market knowledge is superfluous and experience is a handicap. But the typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Ignorance Loss Typical
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
The money cost of the reservoir plan literally fades into insignificance when it is compared with the financial burden which the great depression imposed on the nation.
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Cost Depression Financial Great
In other words, the market is not a weighing machine, on which the value of each issue is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism, in accordance with its specific qualities.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Choices Impersonal Issues Voting
The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Interest Lying Market Timing
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
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.
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Defeat Growth Teach
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
The sillier the market’s behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business like investor.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Behavior Investing Opportunity
It is a fact worth pondering that four centuries ago the evil of “an abundance or surplus” arose from its being kept off the market, while today the evil of surplus lies in its being thrown upon the market.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Evil Four Lying
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
Speculative stock movements are carried too far in both directions, frequently in the general market and at all times in at least some of the individual issues.
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Investing Issues Movement
In an ideal world, the intelligent investor would hold stocks only when they are cheap and sell them when they become overpriced, then duck into the bunker of bonds and cash until stocks again become cheap enough to buy.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Ducks Intelligent Investing
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
No statement is more true and better applicable to Wall Street than the famous warning of Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Past Wall
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.
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Body Investment Safety
Do not let anyone else run your business
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Anyone Buisness Else Running
If fees consume more than 1% of your assets annually, you should probably shop for another adviser.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Assets Fees Investing

The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.

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The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.

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