Benjamin Graham - Stock Quotes

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A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.

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
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
The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.

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

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
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
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
Mr. Market does not always price stocks the way an appraiser or a private buyer would value a business. Instead, when stocks are going up, he happily pays more than their objective value; and, when they are going down, he is desperate to dump them for less than their true worth.

Benjamin Graham
Calculate a stock's price/earnings ratio yourself, using Graham's formula of current price divided by average earnings over the past three years.

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
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
Stock
speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D
are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.

Benjamin Graham
The chief obstacle to success lies in the stubborn fact that if the favorable prospects of a concern are clearly apparent they are almost always reflected already in the current price of the stock. Buying such an issue is like betting on a topheavy favorite in a horse race. The chances may be on your side, but the real odds are against you.

Benjamin Graham
When somebody asserts that a stock has an earning power of so much, I am sure that the person who hears him doesn't know what he means, and there is a good chance that the man who uses it doesn't know what it means.

Benjamin Graham
Basically, 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
The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character

Benjamin Graham
Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.

Benjamin Graham
Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

Benjamin Graham
The investor is neither smart not richer when he buys in an advancing market and the market continues to rise. That is true even when he cashes in a goodly profit, unless either (a) he is definitely through with buying stocks—an unlikely story—or (b) he is determined to reinvest only at considerably lower levels. In a continuous program no market profit is fully realized until the later reinvestment has actually taken place, and the true measure of the trading profit is the difference between the previous selling level and the new buying level.

Benjamin Graham
The correct attitude of the security analyst toward the stock market might well be that of a man toward his wife. He shouldn't pay too much attention to what the lady says, but he can't afford to ignore it entirely. That is pretty much the position that most of us find ourselves vis-à-vis the stock market.

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

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

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

Benjamin Graham
Nothing in finance is more fatuous and harmful, in our opinion, than the firmly established attitude of common stock investors regarding questions of corporate management. That attitude is summed up in the phrase: "If you don't like the management, sell your stock." [...] The public owners seem to have abdicated all claim to control over the paid superintendents of their property

Benjamin Graham
Past experience appears to have particular validity and value in dealing with the stock market. The good old rules all seem to be good still. It is conceivable, of course, that the continuity of the market may end someday—perhaps tomorrow—and past experience may really prove an handicap in meeting the new conditions, as it appeared to be a handicap for a great many months in 1927-29. But is it not the part of intelligence to run the small risk of being wrong by sticking to the old principles, rather than to run the big risk of being wrong by breaking away from past experience?

Benjamin Graham
The investor has the benefit of the stock market's daily and changing appraisal of his holdings, for whatever that appraisal may be worth, and, second, that the investor is able to increase or decrease his investment at the market's daily figure—if he chooses. Thus the existence of a quoted market gives the investor certain options which he does not have if his security is unquoted. But it does not impose the current quotation on an investor who prefers to take his idea of value from some other source.

Benjamin Graham