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Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.

Benjamin Graham

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
There is something paradoxical in the fact that by establishing an export market we subject our entire domestic production to the vagaries of that market.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Facts Paradoxical Subjects
Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Confusing Investing Mistakes
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
Instead of passing blithely over into that Promised Land, flowing almost literally with milk and honey, it may be our destiny to wander a full 40 years or more in the wilderness of doubt and divided sentiments.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Destiny Honey Milk Years
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
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
Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Emotion Investing Investment
Rather should we say that the market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Countless Emotion Party Rather
An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

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

Faces Government Surplus
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
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Risk Successful
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
If fees consume more than 1% of your assets annually, you should probably shop for another adviser.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Assets Fees Investing
The Reservoir system will function not only as an equalizer of business conditions, but also as a national store to meet further emergencies, such as war and drought, and-most important of all-as the concrete means of developing a steadily higher living standard for all.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Important Mean War
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
Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Intelligent Investing Optimism
In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Business Intelligent Running
The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Essence Safety Unnecessary
The people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Imperfection Men People
you may take it as an axiom that you cannot profit in Wall Street by continuously doing the obvious or the popular thing
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

May Profit Wall
… 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
To establish the right price for a stock, the market must have adequate information, but it by no means follows that is the market has this information it will thereupon establish the right price.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Adequate Information Mean
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Analysis Promise Safety
Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Issues Portfolios Quality
High valuations entail high risks.
BENJAMIN GRAHAM

Investing Risk Valuation

Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.

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Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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