Benjamin Graham

The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of
favorable business conditions.
– Benjamin Graham

Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by
temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.
– Benjamin Graham

The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable willpower to keep from following the
crowd.
– Benjamin Graham

The one principal that applies to nearly all these so-called “technical approaches” is that one
should buy because a stock or the market has gone up and one should sell because it has
declined. This is the exact opposite of sound business sense everywhere else, and it is most
unlikely that it can lead to lasting success in Wall Street. In our own stock-market experience
and observation, extending over 50 years, we have not known a single person who has
consistently or lastingly made money by thus “following the market.” We do not hesitate to
declare that this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.
– Benjamin Graham

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it
almost invariably leads to disaster.
– Benjamin Graham

There are two requirements for success in Wall Street. One – you have to think correctly;
and secondly you have to think independently.
– Benjamin Graham

I quickly convinced myself that the true key to happiness lay in a modest standard of living
which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions.
– Benjamin Graham

It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
– Benjamin Graham

Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when
they are most needed.
– Benjamin Graham

The moral seems to be that any approach to money making in the stock market which can be
easily described and followed by a lot of people is by its terms too simple and too easy to last.
– Benjamin Graham

An investment is based on incisive, quantitative analysis, while speculation depends on whim
and guesswork.
– Benjamin Graham

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.
– Benjamin Graham

The mistakes of the market are thus the mistakes of groups or masses of individuals. Most of
them can be traced to one or more of three basic causes: exaggeration, oversimplification or
neglect.
– Benjamin Graham

The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.
– Benjamin Graham

To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve
superior results is harder than it looks.
– Benjamin Graham

Most of the time 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

The vast majority of stock traders are inevitably doomed to failure.
– Benjamin Graham

Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from
the facts and if you know your judgement is sound, act on it – even though others may
hesitate or differ.
– Benjamin Graham

You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because
your data and reasoning are right.
– Benjamin Graham

In market analysis there are no margins of safety; you are either right or wrong, and if you
are wrong, you lose money.
– Benjamin Graham

Analysis of the future should be penetrating rather than prophetic.
– Benjamin Graham

The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of
returns.
– Benjamin Graham

The more the investor depends on his portfolio and the income therefrom, the more necessary
it is for him to guard against the unexpected and the disconcerting in this part of his life.
– Benjamin Graham

If the share price advances, it is because most investors expect earnings to grow.
– Benjamin Graham

People who habitually purchase common stocks at more than about 20 times their average
earnings are likely to lose considerable money in the long run.
– Benjamin Graham

There is no sure and easy path to riches in Wall Street or anywhere else.
– Benjamin Graham

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. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market
and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.
– Benjamin Graham

Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.
– Benjamin Graham

Much as the investor would like to be able to buy at just the right time and to sell out when
prices are about to fall, experience shows that he is not likely to be brilliantly successful in
such efforts and that by injecting the trading element into his investment operations he will
disrupt the income return on his capital and inevitably shift his interest into speculative
directions.
– Benjamin Graham

If you want to speculate do so with your eyes open, knowing that you will probably lose
money in the end; be sure to limit the amount at risk and to separate it completely from your
investment program.
– Benjamin Graham

Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment
process.
– Benjamin Graham

If the reason people invest is to make money, then in seeking advice they are asking others
to tell them how to make money. That idea has some element of naivete. Businessmen seek
professional advice on various elements of their business, but they do not expect to be told
how to make a profit.
– Benjamin Graham

In general, the shares of second line companies fluctuate more widely than the major ones.
– Benjamin Graham

It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the
crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.
– Benjamin Graham

Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.
– Benjamin Graham

It remained true that sound investment principles produced generally sound results.
– Benjamin Graham

Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever; when a company has already registered a
brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more
difficult.
– Benjamin Graham

The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This
means that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by
impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money’s
worth for his purchase.
– Benjamin Graham

Cartels have spread and will spread as long as the world lacks an effective mechanism by
which balanced expansion may be achieved without a resulting disruption of prices.
– Benjamin Graham

They made me a professor because I am a practical operator.
– Benjamin Graham

I have known Buffett for many years, and I must say I have never met anyone else with his
combination of high character and brilliant business qualities. His record as an investment
fund manager is probably unequalled.
– Benjamin Graham