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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

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At heart, uncertainty and investing are synonyms.
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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
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Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.
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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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Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.
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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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Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
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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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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.
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It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.
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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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To establish the right price for a stock, the market must have adequate information, but it by no means follows that is the market has this information it will thereupon establish the right price.
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A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.
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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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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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Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.
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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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