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In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

Benjamin Graham

The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Earning Investing Should
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
The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Loss Quality
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
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
The most striking thing about Graham’s discussion of how to allocate your assets between stocks and bonds is that he never mentions the word “age”.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Issues Portfolios Quality
… 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
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
Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble… to give way to hope, fear and greed.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Hope Money Time
A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Ownership Share Trouble Value
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 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
A speculator gambles that a stock will go up in price because somebody else will pay even more for it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Pay Speculators
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
You must never delude yourself into thinking that you’re investing when you’re speculating.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Speculating Thinking

In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

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In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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