The Greatest Danger Investors Face
Benjamin Graham described Wall Street as a “madhouse” and said the stock market “resembles a huge laundry at which institutions take in large blocks of each other’s wash without true rhyme or reason.
”The problem with our industry, Graham insisted, is not speculation per see; speculation has always been part of the market and always will be. Our failure as professionals, he went on, is our continuing inability to distinguish between investment and speculation. If the professionals can’t make that distinction, how can individual investors? The greatest danger investors face, Graham warned, is acquiring speculative habits without realizing they have done so. Then they end up with a speculator’s return — not a wise move for someone’s life savings.