Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Grahamwas a British-born American economist and professional investor. Graham is considered the father of value investing, an investment approach he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd through various editions of their famous book Security Analysis. Graham had many disciples in his lifetime, a number of whom went on to become successful investors themselves. Graham's most well-known disciples include Warren Buffett, William J. Ruane, Irving Kahn and Walter J. Schloss, among others...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth8 May 1894
CountryUnited States of America
Benjamin Graham quotes about
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.
An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
Losing some money is an inevitable part of investing, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. But to be an intelligent investor, you must take responsibility for ensuring that you never lose most or all of your money.
The underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.
Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.
Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.
The reader can test his own psychology by asking himself whether he would consider, in retrospect, the selling at 156 in 1925 and buying back at 109 in 1931 was a satisfactory operation. Some may think that an intelligent investor should have been able to sell out much closer to the high of 381 and to buy back nearer the low of 41. If that is your own view you are probably a speculator at heart and will have trouble keeping to true investment precepts while the market rushes up and down.
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.
The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.
As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.
The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular - but when something goes wrong.
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.
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 intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.