Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.
The volume of credit depends upon three factors: the desire to borrow, the ability to lend and the desire to lend.
The existence of such a war chest might go far to strengthen our prestige and frighten off any would be assailant.
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.
Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.
The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.
If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.
I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities.
Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.
you may take it as an axiom that you cannot profit in Wall Street by continuously doing the obvious or the popular thing
The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.
An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.
The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.
In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: 'This too will pass.'
While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster
Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.
As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.
To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.
Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.
It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.
Stock speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.
The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular - but when something goes wrong.
By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimize the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.
Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.
The purpose of this book is to supply, in the form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy.
The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing ... without rhyme or reason.
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.
there is a tendency in part of Wall Street people to pay excessive attention to the most recent figures and the present financial picture.
The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.
The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.
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).
Calculate a stock's price/earnings ratio yourself, using Graham's formula of current price divided by average earnings over the past three years.
The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character
The most striking thing about Graham's discussion of how to allocate your assets between stocks and bonds is that he never mentions the word "age".
Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.
Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.
We define a bargain issue as one which, on the basis of facts established by analysis, appears to be worth considerably more that it is selling for.
For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some price they would be so dear that they would be sold.
If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what`s going to happen to the stock market.
There is something paradoxical in the fact that by establishing an export market we subject our entire domestic production to the vagaries of that market.
The intelligent investor shouldn't ignore Mr. Market entirely. Instead, you should do business with him- but only to the extent that it serves your interests.
The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price.
Speculative stock movements are carried too far in both directions, frequently in the general market and at all times in at least some of the individual issues.
Both a priori reasoning and experience teach us that as as these funds grow larger the geometrical rate of growth by compound interest ultimately defeats itself.
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.
The true investor... will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operation results of his companies.
Traditionally the investor has been the man with patience and the courage of his convictions who would buy when the harried or disheartened speculator was selling.