Quote

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

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
Decide
Likely
Matter
Trying
Think
Thinking
Speculation
Largely
Stock

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

Image
An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
Benjamin Graham
Image
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means ... that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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
Image
Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
To see how much a company is truly earning on the capital it deploys in its businesses, look beyond EPS to Return on Invested Capital (ROIC).
Benjamin Graham
Image
The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing ... without rhyme or reason.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Even the most conservative must realize that the recent transformation of surplus from an individual to a national disaster implies a scathing indictment of our capitalist system as it has now developed.
Benjamin Graham
Image
It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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.
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