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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.

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
Primary
Holding
Securities
Lies
Investor
Security
Acquiring
Lying
Suitable
Interest
Prices
Investors
Primaries

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.
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Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.
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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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Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.
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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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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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The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.
Benjamin Graham
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Mr. Market does not always price stocks the way an appraiser or a private buyer would value a business. Instead, when stocks are going up, he happily pays more than their objective value and, when they are going down, he is desperate to dump them for less than their true worth.
Benjamin Graham
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The correct attitude of the security analyst toward the stock market might well be that of a man toward his wife. He shouldn't pay too much attention to what the lady says, but he can't afford to ignore it entirely. That is pretty much the position that most of us find ourselves vis-à-vis the stock market.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
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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The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
Benjamin Graham
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You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.
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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Why should the cotton growers suffer if there is shortage of wheat?
Benjamin Graham
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Stocks can be dynamite.
Benjamin Graham
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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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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham