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The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.

Benjamin Graham

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

Average Good Man Management
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
An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Business Investing Investors Values
… the loss of public confidence in the financial community growing out of its own conduct in recent years. I insist that more damage has been done to stock values and to the future of equities from inside Wall Street than from outside Wall Street.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Loss Wall Years
Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Successful Thinking
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
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
Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Issues Portfolios Quality
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Approach Investing Making Money
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
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
Why should the cotton growers suffer if there is shortage of wheat?
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Cotton Suffering Wheat
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
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.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Intelligent Investing Opposites
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
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
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
Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Ignored Investing Taken
Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Optimism
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
The investor should be aware that even though safety of its principal and interest may be unquestioned, a long term bond could vary widely in market price in response to changes in interest rates.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Long Safety
Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Conservative Investing Investment
It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Decline Investing Should
Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Controlling Games Investing
The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Permit Worried

The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.

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The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.

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