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Speculators often prosper through ignorance it is a cliché that in a roaring bull market knowledge is superfluous and experience is a handicap. But the typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss

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
Experience
Investing
Prosper
Profit
Roaring
Market
Bull
Ultimate
Clich
Ignorance
Superfluous
Speculator
Loss
Bulls
Speculators
Knowledge
Typical
Handicap
Often
Temporary
Handicaps

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.
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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.
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The ideal form of common stock analysis leads to a valuation of the issue which can be compared with the current price to determine whether or not the security is an attractive purchase.
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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.
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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
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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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At heart, uncertainty and investing are synonyms.
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Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
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... the loss of public confidence in the financial community growing out of its own conduct in recent years. I insist that more damage has been done to stock values and to the future of equities from inside Wall Street than from outside Wall Street.
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The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.
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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).
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It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.
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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.
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Do not let anyone else run your business
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The sillier the market's behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business like investor.
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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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It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
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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.
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The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing ... without rhyme or reason.
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It is a fact worth pondering that four centuries ago the evil of an abundance or surplus arose from its being kept off the market, while today the evil of surplus lies in its being thrown upon the market.
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