Benjamin Graham: Trending quotes (page 2)

“It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter X, Commodity Unit Stabilization, p. 109

Time

“If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities, then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter III, The Investor and His Advisers, p. 45

Money , Training

“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

Part II, Chapter IX, The Cost of the Reservoir Plan, p. 114
Storage and Stability (1937)

Money

“The true investor scarcely ever has to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free di disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons mistakes of judgement.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 40

Books , Time , Personality

“The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter III, The Paradox of the Stockpile, p. 23

World

“Whether we like it or not, government intervention in the face of surplus is here to stay.”

Benjamin Graham

Part I, Chapter II, Government and Surplus Stocks, p. 26
Storage and Stability (1937)

“The story of Joseph in Egypt and of the seven fat and the seven lean years has passed into the homely wisdom of the ages; but our economic thinking seems to have lost contact with so simple and basic approach to prudent management of a nations welfare.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter V, Stabilization of Raw Materials, p. 56

Wisdom , Age , Home , Thinking

“The graph does show one tremendous rise and collapse which stands out starkly from all the other fluctuations. This is commonly called the "new era" stock market of 1927-33. The striking feature of this phenomenon was that the new era existed solely in the minds of market speculators. The whole episode, in retrospect, now seems to have been one of those rare manifestations of mass financial madness which we used to study in our history books under the titles of "the South Sea Bubble", "the Mississippi Bubble" and so on.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 36

Books , History , Study , Sea

“Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 21

Intelligence , Success

“A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial—say, more than a third from cost—or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 25

Loss

“It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 11

Study , Loss

“The people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.”

Benjamin Graham

Part V, Chapter XIX, The Reservoir Plan and Tradition, p. 234 (See also; Karl Marx, Capital)
Storage and Stability (1937)

People , Nature

“All the real money in investment will have to be made—as most of it has been in the past— not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 17

Wisdom , Money , Past

“Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 42

Time , Forgetting

“Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 44

“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

Part IV, Chapter XVI, Reservoir Plan Versus Crop Control, p. 195
Storage and Stability (1937)

Food , Clothes

“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.”

Benjamin Graham

Part II, Chapter VIII,Ultimate Uses of the Stored Units, p. 103
Storage and Stability (1937)

“The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 43

“Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.”

Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 20, "Margin of Safety": The Central Concept, p. 280

Business , Loss , Time

“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”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 8

Knowledge