Benjamin Graham Quotes

It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.

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.

Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.

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”.

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.

Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same.

Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.

Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.

By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimize the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.

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.