No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the "margin of safety" - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.

Benjamin Graham

Categorized in : Odds Errors Safety

Investing isn't about beating others at their game. It's about controlling yourself at your own game.

Benjamin Graham

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Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

Benjamin Graham

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The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

Benjamin Graham

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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.

Benjamin Graham

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Mathematics is ordinarily considered as producing precise and dependable results; but in the stock market the more elaborate and abstruse the mathematics the more uncertain and speculative are the conclusions we draw there from. Whenever calculus is brought in, or higher algebra, you could take it as a warning that the operator was trying to substitute theory for experience, and usually also to give to speculation the deceptive guise of investment.

Benjamin Graham

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Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

Benjamin Graham

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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 behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.

Benjamin Graham

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The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.

Benjamin Graham

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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

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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.

Benjamin Graham

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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

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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.

Benjamin Graham

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Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.

Benjamin Graham

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A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.

Benjamin Graham

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In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

Benjamin Graham

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The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.

Benjamin Graham

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Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.

Benjamin Graham

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An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

Benjamin Graham

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You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Benjamin Graham

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Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.

Benjamin Graham

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