Benjamin Graham Investing Quotations

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

Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.

The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.

The true investor... will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operation results of his companies.

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.

An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses.

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.

Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

We define a bargain issue as one which, on the basis of facts established by analysis, appears to be worth considerably more that it is selling for.

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.

The intelligent investor shouldn't ignore Mr. Market entirely. Instead, you should do business with him- but only to the extent that it serves your interests.

The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular - but when something goes wrong.

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.

As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.

Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.

Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.

Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.

Even defensive portfolios should be changed from time to time, especially if the securities purchased have an apparently excessive advance and can be replaced by issues much more reasonable priced.

The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.

High valuations entail high risks.

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

The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing ... without rhyme or reason.

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

Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it's imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.

Traditionally the investor has been the man with patience and the courage of his convictions who would buy when the harried or disheartened speculator was selling.

If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities, then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled.

The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price.

It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.

It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.

The ideal form of common stock analysis leads to a valuation of the issue which can be compared with the current price to determine whether or not the security is an attractive purchase.

Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

The best values today are often found in the stocks that were once hot and have since gone cold.

There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.

Losing some money is an inevitable part of investing, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. But to be an intelligent investor, you must take responsibility for ensuring that you never lose most or all of your money.

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

At heart, "uncertainty" and "investing" are synonyms.

Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.

The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.

For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some price they would be so dear that they would be sold.

We have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly make money by thus "following the market". We do not hesitate to declare this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.

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".

The sillier the market's behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business like investor.

The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.

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.

Speculative stock movements are carried too far in both directions, frequently in the general market and at all times in at least some of the individual issues.

Mr. Market's job is to provide you with prices; your job is to decide whether it is to your advantage to act on them. You no not have to trade with hime just because he constantly begs you to.

Nothing important on Wall Street can be counted on to occur exactly in the same way as it happened before.

The investor should be aware that even though safety of its principal and interest may be unquestioned, a long term bond could vary widely in market price in response to changes in interest rates.

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.

In an ideal world, the intelligent investor would hold stocks only when they are cheap and sell them when they become overpriced, then duck into the bunker of bonds and cash until stocks again become cheap enough to buy.

There is no reason to feel any shame in hiring someone to pick stocks or mutual funds for you. But there's one responsibility that you must never delegate. You, and no one but you, must investigate whether an adviser is trustworthy and charges reasonable fees.

The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.

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".

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

A speculator gambles that a stock will go up in price because somebody else will pay even more for it.

Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.

The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.