Echoes

Our favorite holding period is forever.

All the real money in investment will have to be made—as most of it has been in the past— not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.

Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.

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

If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.

Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.

...if you are nothing but profit-conscious, you cannot see the opportunities ahead.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

The investor's chief problem — and even his worst enemy — is likely to be himself.

To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.

Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.

Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.

Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Slow and steady wins the race.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words: industry and frugality — that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.