Quote collection
197 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all."
"Do not let anyone else run your business"
"Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies' performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time."
"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 beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard."
"A speculator gambles that a stock will go up in price because somebody else will pay even more for it."
"Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied."
"We are convinced that the intelligent investor can derive satisfactory results from pricing of either type (market timing or fundamental analysis via price). We are equally sure that if he places his emphasis on timing, in the sense of forecasting, he will end up as a speculator and with a speculator's financial results." And "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."
"Stocks can be dynamite."
"Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep."
"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."
"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."
"The thing that I have been emphasizing in my own work for the last few years has been the group approach. To try to buy groups of stocks that meet some simple criterion for being undervalued-regardless of the industry and with very little attention to the individual company."
"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."
"Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap."
"Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure."
"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 individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means ... that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase."
"Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything."