black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Experts Optimistic People
Successful investment may become substantially a matter of techniques and criteria that are learnable, rather than the product of unique and incommunicable mental powers.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Successful Technique Unique
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
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
The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Discipline Financial Plan Want Way
Nothing important on Wall Street can be counted on to occur exactly in the same way as it happened before.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Important Investing Wall
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

Effort Loss Mistakes
The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor’s own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right or at least valuable answers.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysts Answers Attitude
Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Earning Loss Real Risk
A speculator gambles that a stock will go up in price because somebody else will pay even more for it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Pay Speculators
While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Accomplishment Investing 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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Body Investment Safety
Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Cheap Enterprise Enterprises Investing Stock
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
The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Faces Government Surplus
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
Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Conclusion Facts Judgment May Sound
Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Hat Investing Winter
Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it’s imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Investing Speculating Thinking
There is no reason to feel any shame in hiring someone to pick stocks or mutual funds for you. But there’s one responsibility that you must never delegate. You, and no one but you, must investigate whether an adviser is trustworthy and charges reasonable fees.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Responsibility Shame
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
Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies’ performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Character Giving Years
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
Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Successful Technique

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Benjamin Graham Quotes