Quote

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

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

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

Image
Cartels have spread and will spread as long as the world lacks an effective mechanism by which balanced expansion may be achieved without a resulting disruption of prices.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.
Benjamin Graham
Image
The money cost of the reservoir plan literally fades into insignificance when it is compared with the financial burden which the great depression imposed on the nation.
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 market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
Benjamin Graham
Image
If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.
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
Image
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.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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
Image
Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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
Image
The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.
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
It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.
Benjamin Graham
Image
It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.
Benjamin Graham
Image
Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
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
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
Image
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
Benjamin Graham
Image
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