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In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

Benjamin Graham

If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what`s going to happen to the stock market.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

People Wall Years
The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Loss Quality
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
If General Motors is worth $60 a share to an investor it must be because the full common-stock ownership of this gigantic enterprise as a whole is worth 43 million (shares) times $60, or no less than $2,600 million.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Common Ownership Share
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 underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Change Intelligent Significant Sound
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
Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Faces Government Surplus
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
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
Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Issues Portfolios Quality
Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Gone Investing Sell
Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Fall Investing Opportunity
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Risk Successful

In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

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In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

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