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In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

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
Practical
Legally
Investing
Foresight
Thus
Hindsight
Market
Impossibility
Financial
Timing
Blind
Markets
Emotional
Investors
Forever
Practicals

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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Stocks can be dynamite.
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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.
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The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.
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It must be fundamentally wrong to reduce production of food and fiber while one-third of our population is still ill fed and ill clothed.
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Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.
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Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.
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Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.
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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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Wall Street has a few prudent principles the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.
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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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Mr. Market's job is to provide you with prices your job is to decide whether it is to your advantage to act on them. You no not have to trade with hime just because he constantly begs you to.
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Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.
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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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Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
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