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

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
Actively
Optimistic
Experts
Sell
Sells
Including
People
Pessimistic

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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Stock speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.
Benjamin Graham
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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
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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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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.
Benjamin Graham
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The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.
Benjamin Graham
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Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.
Benjamin Graham
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Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.
Benjamin Graham
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Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.
Benjamin Graham
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Do not let anyone else run your business
Benjamin Graham
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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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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.
Benjamin Graham
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The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.
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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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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The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.
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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In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.
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The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
Benjamin Graham