Quotes About Investing

The intelligent investor realizes that stocks become more risky, not less, as their prices rise—and less risky, not more, as their prices fall. The intelligent investor dreads a bull market, since it makes stocks more costly to buy. And conversely (so long as you keep enough cash on hand to meet your spending needs), you should welcome a bear market, since it puts stocks back on sale.

all suggest looking at the daily list of new 52-week lows in the Wall Street Journal or the similar table in the "Market Week" section of Barron's. That will point you toward stocks and industries that are unfashionable or unloved and that thus offer the potential for high returns once perceptions change.

Hence, after this foreshortened discussion of the major considerations, we once again enunciate the same basic compromise policy for defensive investors—namely that at all times they have a significant part of their funds in bond-type holdings and a significant part also in equities.

Take the five stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average with the lowest stock prices and highest dividend yields. Discard the one with the lowest price. Put 40% of your money in the stock with the second-lowest price. Put 20% in each of the three remaining stocks. One year later, sort the Dow the same way and reset the portfolio according to steps 1 through 4. Repeat until wealthy.

At some point in its life, almost every stock is a bargain; at another time, it will be expensive. Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.

Read backwards. When you research a company's financial reports, start reading on the last page and slowly work your way toward the front. Anything that the company doesn't want you to find is buried in the back—which is precisely why you should look there first.

Today's defensive investor can do even better—by buying a total stock-market index fund that holds essentially every stock worth having. A low-cost index fund is the best tool ever created for low-maintenance stock investing—and any effort to improve on it takes more work (and incurs more risk and higher costs) than a truly defensive investor can justify.

Evidently it is not only the tyro who needs to be warned that while enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.

One technique that can be helpful: See which leading professional money managers own the same stocks you do. If one or two names keep turning up, go to the websites of those fund companies and download their most recent reports. By seeing which other stocks these investors own, you can learn more about what qualities they have in common; by reading the managers' commentary, you may get ideas on how to improve your own approach.3

Of course, wonders can be accomplished with the right individual selections, bought at the right levels, and later sold after a huge rise and before the probable decline. But the average investor can no more expect to accomplish this than to find money growing on trees.

Another modern development of relevance is the ubiquitous cable television coverage of the stock market. This frenetic lunacy exacerbates the already short-term orientation of most investors. It foments the view that it is possible—or even necessary—to have an opinion on everything pertinent to the financial markets, as opposed to the patient and highly selective approach endorsed by Graham and Dodd.

Finally, most of the high returns on IPOs are captured by members of an

In June 1949 the S & P composite index sold at only 6.3 times the applicable earnings of the past 12 months; in March 1961 the ratio was 22.9 times. Similarly, the dividend yield on the S & P index had fallen from over 7% in 1949 to only 3.0% in 1961, a contrast heightened by the fact that interest rates on high-grade bonds had meanwhile risen from 2.60% to 4.50%. This is certainly the most remarkable turnabout in the public's attitude in all stock-market history.

Conversely, sound procedure would call for reducing the common-stock component below 50% when in the judgment of the investor the market level has become dangerously high.

Las perspectivas evidentes de crecimiento físico de un sector no se traducen en beneficios evidentes para los inversionistas. Los expertos no disponen de formas fiables de elegir y concentrar sus inversiones en las empresas más prometedoras de los sectores más prometedores.

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

In our own stock-market experience and observation, extending over 50 years, we have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly made money by thus "following the market." We do not hesitate to declare that this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.

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

Companies should buy back their shares when they are cheap—not when they are at or near record highs. Unfortunately, it recently has become all too common for companies to repurchase their stock when it is overpriced. There is no more cynical waste of a company's cash—since the real purpose of that maneuver is to enable top executives to reap multimillion-dollar paydays by selling their own stock options in the name of "enhancing shareholder value.

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?

Looking back, you can always see exactly when you should have bought and sold your stocks. But don't let that fool you into thinking you can see, in real time, just when to get in and out. In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.5

One technique that can be helpful: See which leading professional money managers own the same stocks you do. If one or two names keep turning up, go to the websites of those fund companies and download their most recent reports. By seeing which other stocks these investors own, you can learn more about what qualities they have in common; by reading the managers' commentary, you may get ideas on how to improve your own approach.

we regard growth stocks as a whole as too uncertain and risky a vehicle for the defensive investor. Of course, wonders can be accomplished with the right individual selections, bought at the right levels, and later sold after a huge rise and before the probable decline.