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People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

Benjamin Graham

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
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
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
No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the “margin of safety” – never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be – can you minimize your odds of error.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Errors Odds Safety
The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing … without rhyme or reason.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Block Investing Laundry
Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Bad Company Good Investing Price Stock
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 intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Crowd Following Intelligent Needs
There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Principles 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
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
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
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
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
No statement is more true and better applicable to Wall Street than the famous warning of Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Past 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

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

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People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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