Benjamin Graham Quotes

151 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Graham
It is our argument that a sufficiently low price can turn a security of mediocre quality into a sound investment opportunity - provided that the buyer is informed and experienced and he practices adequate diversification. For, if the price is low enough to create a substantial margin of safety, the security thereby meets our criterion of investment.

Benjamin Graham
It always seemed, and still seems, ridiculously simple to say that if one can acquire a diversified group of common stocks at a price less than the applicable net current assets alone - after deducting all prior claims, and counting as zero the fixed and other assets - the results should be quite satisfactory.

Benjamin Graham
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.

Benjamin Graham
People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

Benjamin Graham
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.

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

Benjamin Graham
In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: 'This too will pass.'

Benjamin Graham
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

Benjamin Graham
The determining trait of the enterprising (or active, or aggressive) investor is his willingness to devote time and care to the selection of securities that are both sound and more attractive than the average.

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

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
The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Graham