18 quotes
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.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
The investor would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: "Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop".
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
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
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
Good management are rarely overcompensated to an extent that makes any significant difference with respect to the stockholder's position. Poor management are always overcompensated, because they are worth less than nothing to the owners.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
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: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor's own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right—or at least valuable— answers.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
If General Motors is worth $60 a share to an investor it must be because the full common-stock ownership of this gigantic enterprise as a whole is worth 43 million (shares) times $60, or no less than $2,600 million.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
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.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 44
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
The purchase of a bargain issue presupposes that the market's current appraisal is wrong, or at least that the buyer's idea of value is more likely to be right than the market's. In this process the investor sets his judgement against that of the market. To some this may seem arrogant or foolhardy.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
In most cases the favorable 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.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities, then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
The history of the past fifty years, and longer, indicates that a diversified holding of representative common stocks will prove more profitable over a stretch of years than a bond portfolio, with one important provisio—that the shares must be purchased at reasonable market levels, that is, levels that are reasonable in the light of fairly well-defined standards derived from past experience.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)
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.
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)