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

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.
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Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult.
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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
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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.
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The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.
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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.
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High valuations entail high risks.
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It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.
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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 beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
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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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Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
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The qualitative factors upon which most stress is laid are the nature of the business and the character of the management. These elements are exceedingly important, but they are also exceedingly difficult to deal with intelligently.
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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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Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
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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.
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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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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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Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.
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Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
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