Benjamin Graham：Voting Machine and Weighing Machine
Benjamin Graham《Security Analysis》· Chapter XXXIX, “Price-Earnings Ratios for Common Stocks. Adjustments for Changes in Capitalization” · Investing · Cognition · Human nature
The stock market is a voting machine rather than a weighing machine. It responds to factual data not directly but only as they affect the decisions of buyers and sellers.
Source：
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.7983
Locator：Chapter XXXIX, “Price-Earnings Ratios for Common Stocks,” paragraph beginning “But the stock market itself has no time...” · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Exact match
Reading
Prices reflect human reactions, not precise mechanical valuations.
Context
Graham's actual wording in Security Analysis differs from the popular paraphrase “in the short run the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” That compressed version is a later summary; Graham wrote that prices are the result of human reactions and that the market responds to facts only through buyers' and sellers' decisions. The distinction matters because it warns investors against treating market prices as precise measurements of value.
Today's question
When did you last change your judgment because of the market's vote—and what would you do if you looked only at the business's weight?
版权仍存续（McGraw-Hill）；仅摘录两句话并链接 Internet Archive 公开扫描件，不托管全文。流行语“短期投票机、长期称重机”是后人的压缩转述，非本书原句。
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