The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular – but when something goes wrong.
Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.
To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.
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.
To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.
Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.
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.
Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of good business conditions. The purchasers view the good current earnings as equivalent to ‘earning power’ and assume that prosperity is equivalent to safety.
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.
Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.
As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.
Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.
Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not translate into obvious profits for investors.
The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.
The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.
I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions.
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.