Benjamin Graham Quotes

151 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

Benjamin Graham
By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people's mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.

Benjamin Graham
Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.

Benjamin Graham
Since we have emphasized that analysis will lead to a positive conclusion only in the exceptional case, it follows that many securities must be examined before one is found that has real possibilities for the analyst. By what practical means does he proceed to make his discoveries? Mainly by hard and systematic work.

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

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

Benjamin Graham
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.

Benjamin Graham
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.

Benjamin Graham
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. 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
Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.

Benjamin Graham
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.

Benjamin Graham
In security analysis the prime stress is laid upon protection against untoward events. We obtain this protection by insisting upon margins of safety, or values well in excess of the price paid.

Benjamin Graham
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
Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.

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

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

Benjamin Graham
Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants.

Benjamin Graham
The investor would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: "Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop".

Benjamin Graham
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.

Benjamin Graham
Successful investment may become substantially a matter of techniques and criteria that are learnable, rather than the product of unique and incommunicable mental powers.

Benjamin Graham
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
To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.

Benjamin Graham
If General Motors is worth $60 a share to an investor it must be because the full common-stock ownership of this gigantic enterprise as a whole is worth 43 million (shares) times $60, or no less than $2,600 million.

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

Benjamin Graham
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
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.

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

Benjamin Graham
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.

Benjamin Graham