Benjamin Graham was a British-born American investor, economist, and professor. He is widely known as the ‘father of value investing’ and the ‘dean of Wall Street’, and wrote two of the founding texts in neoclassical investing: Security Analysis with David Dodd, and The Intelligent Investor. His investment philosophy stressed investor psychology, minimal debt, buy-and-hold investing, fundamental analysis, concentrated diversification, buying within the margin of safety, activist investing, and contrarian mind-sets. His work in managerial economics and investing has led to a modern wave of value investing within mutual funds, hedge funds, diversified holding companies, and other investment vehicles. After graduating from Columbia University at age 20, he started his career on Wall Street, eventually founding the Graham-Newman Partnership. Throughout his career, Graham had many notable disciples who went on to receive substantial success in the world of investment, including Warren Buffett, who described him as the second most influential person in his life after his own father. May these Benjamin Graham Quotes On Success inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.
1. “To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.” Benjamin Graham
2. “In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.” Benjamin Graham
3. “You must never delude yourself into thinking that you’re investing when you’re speculating.” Benjamin Graham
4. “Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.” Benjamin Graham
5. “Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.” Benjamin Graham
6. “In most cases the favourable price performance will be accompanied by a well-defined improvement in the average earnings, in the dividend, and in the balance-sheet position. Thus in the long run the market test and the ordinary business test of a successful equity commitment tend to be largely identical.” Benjamin Graham
7. “Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.” Benjamin Graham
8. “The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.” Benjamin Graham
9. “Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.” Benjamin Graham
10. “Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor’s own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.” Benjamin Graham
11. “People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.” Benjamin Graham
12. “Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.” Benjamin Graham
13. “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
14. “Good management produce a good average market price, and bad management produce bad market prices.” Benjamin Graham
15. “The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each other’s washing – without rhyme or reason.” Benjamin Graham
16. “The volume of credit depends upon three factors: the desire to borrow, the ability to lend and the desire to lend.” Benjamin Graham
17. “The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioural discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.” Benjamin Graham
18. “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
19. “An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.” Benjamin Graham
20. “Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.” Benjamin Graham
21. “The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell.” Benjamin Graham
22. “Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.” Benjamin Graham
23. “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” Benjamin Graham
24. “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.” Benjamin Graham
25. “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.” Benjamin Graham
26. “While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.” Benjamin Graham
27. “By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.” Benjamin Graham
28. “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.” Benjamin Graham
29. “It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.” Benjamin Graham
30. “Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it’s imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.” Benjamin Graham
31. “The best values today are often found in the stocks that were once hot and have since gone cold.” Benjamin Graham
32. “The correct attitude of the security analyst toward the stock market might well be that of a man toward his wife. He shouldn’t pay too much attention to what the lady says, but he can’t afford to ignore it entirely. That is pretty much the position that most of us find ourselves vis-à-vis the stock market.” Benjamin Graham
33. “To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a true margin of safety is one that can be demonstrated by figures, by persuasive reasoning, and by reference to a body of actual experience.” Benjamin Graham
34. “An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.” Benjamin Graham
35. “Successful investment may become substantially a matter of techniques and criteria that are learnable, rather than the product of unique and incommunicable mental powers.” Benjamin Graham
36. “If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume. ” Benjamin Graham
37. “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Benjamin Graham
38. “The investor’s chief problem and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.” Benjamin Graham
39. “Without a saving faith in the future, no one would ever invest at all. To be an investor, you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.” Benjamin Graham
40. “Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.” Benjamin Graham
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