Benjamin Graham Quotes

When I stand on my special-issue "Intelligent Investor" ladder and peer out over the frenzied crowd, I see very few others doing the same. Many stocks remain overvalued, and speculative excess - both on the upside and on the downside - is embedded in the frenzy around stocks of all stripes. And yes, I am talking about March 2001, not March 2000.

One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.

Markets love volatility.

As I have said before, the daily machinations of the stock market are like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It's human nature: for most investors, the pain of stocks going down is more tangible than the joy of when they go up. The common impulse is to do something - anything - to minimise the pain.

Betting that markets will be 'volatile' is like betting the weather will be partly cloudy. It's a smart-sounding strategy that doesn't mean much.

The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient.

The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.

Television series are like the stock market. There's room for bears and bulls but no room for pigs.

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.

If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.

Professional traders have always had some system or other based upon their experience and governed either by their attitude towards speculation or by their desires.

The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.

We've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous.

Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.

Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own.

The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

Facebook stock continues to plummet. People started selling once they found out their mom bought it too.

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.

In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually.

Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.