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

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
Worst
Investor
Enemy
Investors
Money
Chief
Problem
Chiefs
Even
Greed
Investing
Investment
Likely

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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The purchase of a bargain issue presupposes that the market's current appraisal is wrong, or at least that the buyer's idea of value is more likely to be right than the market's. In this process the investor sets his judgement against that of the market. To some this may seem arrogant or foolhardy.
Benjamin Graham
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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
Benjamin Graham
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The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.
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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.
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Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.
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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
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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.
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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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Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.
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In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.
Benjamin Graham
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Stocks can be dynamite.
Benjamin Graham
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At heart, uncertainty and investing are synonyms.
Benjamin Graham
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The investor has a right to expect good results to flow from a consistent and courageous application of the principle of buying after the market has declined substantially and selling after it has had a spectacular rise. But he cannot expect to reduce this principle to a simple and foolproof formula, with profits guaranteed and no anxious periods.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing ... without rhyme or reason.
Benjamin Graham
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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
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No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the margin of safety - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.
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Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.
Benjamin Graham