Quotes About Finance

Once you lose 95% of your money, you have to gain 1,900% just to get back to where you started. 1

When changes in the market level have raised the common-stock component to, say, 55%, the balance would be restored by a sale of one-eleventh of the stock portfolio and the transfer of the proceeds to bonds. Conversely, a fall in the common-stock proportion to 45% would call for the use of one-eleventh of the bond fund to buy additional equities.

Value = Current (Normal) Earnings × (8.5 plus twice the expected annual growth rate) The growth figure should be that expected over the next seven to ten years.7

In June 1970 the question "How much?" could be answered by the magic figure 9.40%—the yield obtainable on new offerings of high-grade public-utility bonds. This has now dropped to about 7.3%, but even that return tempts us to ask, "Why give any other answer?

The more a stock has gone up, the more it seems likely to keep going up. But that instinctive belief is flatly contradicted by a fundamental law of financial physics: The bigger they get, the slower they grow. A $1-billion company can double its sales fairly easily; but where can a $50-billion company turn to find another $50 billion in business?

Todo el mundo debe conservar parte de su patrimonio en el seguro refugio del dinero en metálico.

The work of a financial analyst falls somewhere in the middle between that of a mathematician and of an orator.

Robert Shiller, a finance professor at Yale University, says Graham inspired his valuation approach: Shiller compares the current price of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index against average corporate profits over the past 10 years (after inflation). By scanning the historical record, Shiller has shown that when his ratio goes well above 20, the market usually delivers poor returns afterward; when it drops well below 10, stocks typically produce handsome gains down the road.

An industrial company's finances are not conservative unless the common stock (at book value) represents at least half of the total capitalization, including all bank debt.3 For a railroad or public utility the figure should be at least 30%.

In our view there is no superior advantage in any fixed pattern of diversification. It is not essential to spread the risk around, in pre-established proportions, so that each of the major categories of American enterprise is included. What is essential is that a reasonable diversity of industries be achieved, so that the investor can feel he has his stake in a fairly good cross section of the economy. p143

The speculative public is incorrigible. In financial terms it cannot count beyond 3.

Without a saving faith in the future, no one would ever invest at all." P 535

Without banks, you would be burying your money in coffee cans in the back yard

makes money, for we shall need money

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

A man is not allowed to practise medicine unless he knows something of the human body, but a financier is allowed to operate freely without any knowledge at all of the multifarious effects of his activities, with the sole exception of the effect upon his bank account.

I learned the tyranny of figures before I knew the value of a pound.

Back in those less complicated times, there were lots of industries that operated more or less by rote: the old banker's motto, for instance, was "3-6-3": take money in at 3 percent, lend it out at 6 percent, and be on the golf course by 3 P.M.

When Republicans say they want to run government 'like a business,' they apparently mean 'run government like a Trump casino headed straight for bankruptcy court.'

Living in London, you feel the sense of how it has developed into a service city. People come here from around the world - both to launder their money and launder their reputations.

Cyprus has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions.

Budgets can make or break reputations and governments.

I think that all areas of the budget have to be scrubbed. Clearly the entitlement issues have to be reformed and that's an issue that's going to require I think some strong bipartisan cooperation and leadership.

I have a quantitative background, but really, derivatives appealed to me because they require so much creativity.