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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.

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
Ends
Deals
Tricks
Indistinguishable
Become
Bring
Profit
Handicaps
Great
Virtue
Street
Losses
Study
Loss
Profits
Wrong
Streets
Directions
Ability
Wall
Trick
Difficult
Deal
Virtues
Energy
Instead
Native
Channeled

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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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.
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High valuations entail high risks.
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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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Wall Street has a few prudent principles the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.
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Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of good business conditions. The purchasers view the good current earnings as equivalent to 'earning power' and assume that prosperity is equivalent to safety.
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Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
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Speculators often prosper through ignorance it is a cliché that in a roaring bull market knowledge is superfluous and experience is a handicap. But the typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss
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Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.
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Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.
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It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.
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Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.
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Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
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I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history's repeating itself on many different counts. You don't get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of prices is not too high.
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The thing that I have been emphasizing in my own work for the last few years has been the group approach. To try to buy groups of stocks that meet some simple criterion for being undervalued-regardless of the industry and with very little attention to the individual company.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
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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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It is a fact worth pondering that four centuries ago the evil of an abundance or surplus arose from its being kept off the market, while today the evil of surplus lies in its being thrown upon the market.
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