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The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular – but when something goes wrong.

Benjamin Graham

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

Intelligent Investing Opposites
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
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 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
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
Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Average Good Man Management
High valuations entail high risks.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Risk Valuation
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 genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Adoption Book Purpose
Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Hat Investing Winter
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
Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Optimism
A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Much Pay Too
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
you may take it as an axiom that you cannot profit in Wall Street by continuously doing the obvious or the popular thing
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

May Profit Wall
To establish the right price for a stock, the market must have adequate information, but it by no means follows that is the market has this information it will thereupon establish the right price.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Adequate Information Mean
As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Weight
If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Shopping
The idea of storage as a solution of economic problems at least has the support of common sense.It is diametrically opposed to the topsy-turvy Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning that has marked so much of our depression thinking and policy.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Common Sense Ideas Thinking
To enjoy a reasonable chance for continued better than average results, the investor must follow policies which are (1) inherently sound and promising, and (2) not popular on Wall Street.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Average Sound Wall
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysis Promise Safety
By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimize the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Pay Too Much
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
To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Believer Investing Tomorrow
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

The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular – but when something goes wrong.

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The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular – but when something goes wrong.

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Popular Authors

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