&The 'new-era' doctrine - that 'good' stocks (or 'blue chips')  where sound 
investments regardless of how high the price paid for them -- was at  bottom 
only a means for rationalizing under the title of 'investment' the  well-nigh 
universal capitulation to the gambling fever( Why did the investing  public 
turn its attention from dividends, from asset values, and from earnings,  to 
transfer it almost exclusively to the earnings trend? The answer was, first,  
that the records of the past were proving an undependable guide to 
investment;  and secondly, that the rewards offered by the future had become 
irresistibly  alluring ... The notion that the desirability of a common stock 
was entirely  independent of its prices seems incredibly absurd. Yet the 
new-era theory led  directly to this thesis. If a stock was selling at 35 
times the maximum recorded  earnings, instead of 10 times its average 
earnings, which was the pre-boom  standard, the conclusion to be drawn was 
not that the stock was too high but  merely that the standard of value had 
been raised. Instead of judging the market  price by established standards of 
value, the new-era based its standards of  value on the market price.8

- Benjamin Graham & David Dodd, Security Analysis,  1934.