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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

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 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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Imperfection Men People
The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Panic
Do not let anyone else run your business
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Anyone Buisness Else Running
We urge the beginner in security buying not to waste his efforts and his money in trying to beat the market. Let him study security values and initially test out his judgment on price versus value with the smallest possible sums.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Beginner Effort Trying
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
The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Causes Common Investing
In security analysis the prime stress is laid upon protection against untoward events. We obtain this protection by insisting upon margins of safety, or values well in excess of the price paid.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Events Safety Stress
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
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
Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Arriving Important Sound
To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Believer Investing Tomorrow
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
Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Gone Investing Sell
Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Demand Thinking Want

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

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

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Popular Authors

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