Benjamin Graham Best Quotes & Sayings

The Reservoir system will function not only as an equalizer of business conditions, but also as a national store to meet further emergencies, such as war and drought, and-most important of all-as the concrete means of developing a steadily higher living standard for all. — Benjamin Graham

Do not let anyone else run your business — Benjamin Graham

Individual security bargains may be located by the process of security analysis practically at any time. They can be bought with good overall results at all periods except when the general market itself is clearly in a selling range for investors. They show up to best advantage during the years in which the market remains in a relatively narrow and neutral area. — Benjamin Graham

The Reservoir plan is an engineering mechanism applied to the field of economics, and in its essence it has nothing to do with democracy or any other political philosophy. — 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 existence of such a war chest might go far to strengthen our prestige and frighten off any would be assailant. — Benjamin Graham

investors. I have been a student of the philosophy of value investing, which of course was established, executed, and popularized by superinvestors Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffet, and Seth Klarman among — Sundeep Bajikar

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

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

In nine companies out of ten the factor of fluctuation has been a more dominant and important consideration in the matter of investment than has the factor of long-term growth or decline — Benjamin Graham

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

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. — Benjamin Graham

In February 2000, hedge-fund manager James J. Cramer proclaimed that Internet-related companies "are the only ones worth owning right now." These "winners of the new world," as he called them, "are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad. — Benjamin Graham

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

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. — Benjamin Graham

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

The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks. — Benjamin Graham

... The soundness of the best investments must rest not upon legal rights or remedies but upon ample financial capacity of the enterprise. — 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

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

All the real money in investment will have to be made as most of it has been in the past not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements. — Benjamin Graham

Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise. — Benjamin Graham

Perhaps many of the security analysts are handicapped by a flaw in their basic approach to the problem of stock selection. They seek the industries with the best prospects of growth, and the companies in these industries with the best management and other advantages. The implication is that they will buy into such industries and such companies at any price, however high, and they will avoid less promising industries and companies no matter how low the price of their shares. This would be the only correct procedure if the earnings of the good companies were sure to grow at a rapid rate indefinitely in the future, for then in theory their value would be infinite. And if the less promising companies were headed for extinction, with no salvage, the analysts would be right to consider them unattractive at any price. — Benjamin Graham

The essence of proper bond selection consists, ... in obtaining specific and convincing factors of safety in compensation for the surrender of participation in profits. — Benjamin Graham

Security analysis does not assume that a past average will be repeated, but only that it supplies a rough index to what may be expected of the future. A trend, however, cannot be used as a rough index; it represents a definite prediction of either better or poorer results, and it must be either right or wrong. — Benjamin Graham

Benjamin Graham wrote, "Those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap." — Seth Klarman

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

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. — Benjamin Graham

If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume. — Benjamin Graham

A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial say, more than a third from cost or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected. — Benjamin Graham

By investing at a discount, Benjamin Graham knew that he was unlikely to experience losses. — Seth Klarman

The punches you miss are the ones that wear you out. - Boxing trainer Angelo Dundee — Benjamin Graham

The quantitative factors lend themselves far better to thoroughgoing analysis than do the qualitative factors. The former are fewer in number, more easily obtainable, and much better suited to the forming of definite and dependable conclusions. — Benjamin Graham

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

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

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. — Benjamin Graham

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

On the other hand, investing is a unique kind of casino - one where you cannot lose in the end, so long as you play only by the rules that put the odds squarely in your favor. — Benjamin Graham

The art of investment has one characteristic that is not generally appreciated. A creditable, if unspectacular, result can be achieved by the lay investor with a minimum of effort and capability; but to improve this easily attainable standard requires much application and more than a trace of wisdom. If you merely try to bring just a little extra knowledge and cleverness to bear upon your investment program, instead of realizing a little better than normal results, you may well find that you have done worse. — Benjamin Graham

The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself. — Benjamin Graham

You may take it as an axiom that you cannot profit in Wall Street by continuously doing the obvious or the popular thing — Benjamin Graham

To see how much a company is truly earning on the capital it deploys in its businesses, look beyond EPS to Return on Invested Capital (ROIC). — Benjamin Graham

The history of the past fifty years, and longer, indicates that a diversified holding of representative common stocks will prove more profitable over a stretch of years than a bond portfolio, with one important provisio that the shares must be purchased at reasonable market levels, that is, levels that are reasonable in the light of fairly well-defined standards derived from past experience. — Benjamin Graham