"Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed."
"It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling."
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Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing. Book by Benjamin Graham. Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 34, 1949.
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