Echoes

The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.

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.

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.

Our favorite holding period is forever.

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.

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.

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

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

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

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

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.

Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

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

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.

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

He plants trees whose shade another age will enjoy.