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The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.

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
Thing
Earnings
Earning
Ignore
Investing

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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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.
Benjamin Graham
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Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
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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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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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
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Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
Benjamin Graham
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The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
Benjamin Graham
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The thing that I have been emphasizing in my own work for the last few years has been the group approach. To try to buy groups of stocks that meet some simple criterion for being undervalued-regardless of the industry and with very little attention to the individual company.
Benjamin Graham
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Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it's imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.
Benjamin Graham
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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).
Benjamin Graham
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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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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
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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
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
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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The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.
Benjamin Graham