A Quote by Benjamin Graham
The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.
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An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.
The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.
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 longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.
Here’s how to know if you have the makeup to be an investor. How would you handle the following situation? Let’s say you own a Procter & Gamble in your portfolio and the stock price goes down by half. Do you like it better? If it falls in half, do you reinvest dividends? Do you take cash out of savings to buy more? If you have the confidence to do that, then you’re an investor. If you don’t, you’re not an investor, you’re a speculator, and you shouldn’t be in the stock market in the first place.
While we would typically encourage young people to start saving for the future as early as possible, it's unlikely that a budding entrepreneur will be able to do so. The entrepreneur will need every bit of capital available for the business, which will likely crowd out personal savings.
The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.
You need to keep having data points of progress, so even if an investor - and we've all had investors say no to us - there are times where you go back, and you keep them in the loop, and you keep telling them the progress and the perseverance you have.
If we find life out there, and it's not us, we will deem it not intelligent. But what may be equally as likely is that we find life that's vastly more intelligent than we are. If that's the case, we are putty in their hands.
Chances are, if you are following the crowd, you're following the wrong path.
When I stand on my special-issue "Intelligent Investor" ladder and peer out over the frenzied crowd, I see very few others doing the same. Many stocks remain overvalued, and speculative excess - both on the upside and on the downside - is embedded in the frenzy around stocks of all stripes. And yes, I am talking about March 2001, not March 2000.
The only certainty about following the crowd is that you will all get there together.
If you are predisposed to be patient, disciplined and psychologically appreciate the idea of buying bargains, then you're likely to be good at it. If you have a need for action, if you want to be involved in the new and exciting technological breakthroughs of our time, that's great, but you're not a value investor, and you shouldn't be one.
'Crowd folly', the tendency of humans, under some circumstances, to resemble lemmings, explains much foolish thinking of brilliant men and much foolish behavior - like investment management practices of many foundations represented here today. It is sad that today each institutional investor apparently fears most of all that its investment practices will be different from practices of the rest of the crowd.
Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
Women now wield considerable power along political lines and I believe each succeeding year for some time to come will find them wielding that power more effectively.
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