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.

The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.

It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.

In an ideal world, the intelligent investor would hold stocks only when they are cheap and sell them when they become overpriced, then duck into the bunker of bonds and cash until stocks again become cheap enough to buy.

Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.

In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

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