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A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.

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
Defensive
Investors
Investing
Bear
Wreckage
Market
Calmly
Bears
Patiently
Looking
Investor
Always
Prosper

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The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
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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.
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Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.
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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.
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Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.
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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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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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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.
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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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Even defensive portfolios should be changed from time to time, especially if the securities purchased have an apparently excessive advance and can be replaced by issues much more reasonable priced.
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An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses.
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The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.
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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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It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.
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We urge the beginner in security buying not to waste his efforts and his money in trying to beat the market. Let him study security values and initially test out his judgment on price versus value with the smallest possible sums.
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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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Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult.
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Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.
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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.
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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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