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.

The market is always making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes into major setbacks.

The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.

Speculative stock movements are carried too far in both directions, frequently in the general market and at all times in at least some of the individual issues.

It's nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.