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Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

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
Managing
Avoiding
Investing
Risk
Successful

More quotes by Benjamin Graham

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Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.
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 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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No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the margin of safety - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
Benjamin Graham
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The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.
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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The best values today are often found in the stocks that were once hot and have since gone cold.
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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Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.
Benjamin Graham
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It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.
Benjamin Graham
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The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means ... that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase.
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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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It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
Benjamin Graham
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Always buy your straw hats in the Winter
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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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.
Benjamin Graham
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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.
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Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.
Benjamin Graham
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Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.
Benjamin Graham