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A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.

Benjamin Graham

Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Challenges Intelligent Safety
It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Economist Including Needs Profession
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
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
The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Optimism Swings
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
It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Energy Loss Wall
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
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
Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Being Investing Probability Wrong
Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Issues Portfolios Quality
It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Decline Investing Should
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
there is a tendency in part of Wall Street people to pay excessive attention to the most recent figures and the present financial picture.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Attention People Wall
The money cost of the reservoir plan literally fades into insignificance when it is compared with the financial burden which the great depression imposed on the nation.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Cost Depression Financial Great
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

A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.

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A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.

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