Quote

Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.

Benjamin Graham

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Benjamin Graham
Age: 82 †
Born: 1894
Born: May 8
Died: 1976
Died: September 21
Economist
Financier
Investor
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Actively
Optimistic
Experts
Sell
Sells
Including
People
Pessimistic

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

Image
Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Why should the cotton growers suffer if there is shortage of wheat?
Benjamin Graham
Image
Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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
Image
Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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
Image
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Wall Street has a few prudent principles the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it's imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.
Benjamin Graham
Image
If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities, then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled.
Benjamin Graham