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Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Benjamin Graham

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Benjamin Graham
Age: 82 †
Born: 1894
Born: May 8
Died: 1976
Died: September 21
Economist
Financier
Investor
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Time
Subjects
Tendencies
Excessive
People
Common
Greed
Gamble
Hope
Investing
Directions
Fluctuations
Fear
Investment
Speculation
Fluctuation
Money
Price
Irrational
Speculate
Give
Consequence
Professors
Ingrained
Giving
Financial
Finance
Gamer
Way
Subject
Tendency
Stocks

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The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.
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Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
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It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.
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Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
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Cartels have spread and will spread as long as the world lacks an effective mechanism by which balanced expansion may be achieved without a resulting disruption of prices.
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Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish.
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Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
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Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.
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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.
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The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.
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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.
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It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
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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.
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The defensive (or passive) investor will place chief emphasis on the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses. His second aim will be freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions.
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The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.
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If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.
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An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses.
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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.
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An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
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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.
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