Kenneth Fisher Quotes

In the early days, I promoted the idea of spending time in libraries to gain facts that other investors didn't have. Not many people did that kind of research, so it worked.

Normally, if you have a huge category that leads a bear market all the way down to the bottom - like tech after 2000, or energy in the '80-'82 bear market - you get one quick pop, and then years of lag as we fight the old war.

China's stock market is inextricably tied to politics.

China frequently confounds stock market prognosticators because it has a penchant for straying markedly from other broad global indexes year-by-year over the decades - even from emerging markets. It's hit or miss.

Having different types of stocks in your portfolio can enhance returns.

In a bubble, anyone who argues pessimistically is seen as crazy.

The stock market is a discounter of all known information.

All equity categories, correctly calculated, create near-identical lifelong returns. They just get there via wildly differing paths.

The world is filled with successful small businesses that stay small.

Fundamentally cheap stocks are often held in low regard by market participants. Something may be tainting their perception in investors' minds.

Anyone can see how if a feared tax hike doesn't happen, that's a positive factor. But even if tax hikes happen as feared, vast history tells me it doesn't have to have the big bad impact folks fear. And fear of a false factor is always bullish.

Readers regularly ask what can go wrong but almost never what could positively surprise.

Normally, the market peaks before bad news emerges. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what happened in 2000.

The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood.

My father, Philip Fisher, was the toughest guy I ever knew. An example: He had terrible teeth, yet he got his fillings done without ever using a painkiller. Now, that's tough!

One component of the leading economic indicators is the yield curve. Bond investors keep a close eye on this, as it illustrates the spread or difference between long-term interest rates and short-term ones.

The upward move at the beginning of a bull market is almost always huge compared with the vacillations late in the bear market. If you try to pick a bottom, you will miss a good part of the action.

I never liked quantitative easing. It's misunderstood by almost everybody. Flattening the yield curve is not stimulative; flattening the yield curve is anti-stimulative.

Most investors give too much credence to the theory that prices are rational; they presume that a market collapse must have been justified by serious economic trouble.

When the economies of emerging markets don't just grow but beat expectations, there's scarcely a mention.

Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know.

Investors covet past improvements but also always believe pricing unimaginable future creativity and efficiency gains is Pollyannaish. And they're always wrong. Bet on it.

I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.

Fracking opens up vast tracts of the U.S. to exploitation by gas drillers. There's enough energy under our feet to last us for decades, maybe centuries.

Originally, I thought Republican. Now I'm an equal opportunity politician-hater.

Back in the '60s and '70s, data were scarce, and while analysts knew that companies with fat gross margins lagged those with thin gross margins early in bull markets - and overachieved in the later phases - they couldn't do much about it.

Global stocks bottomed in June 1921, but global economies didn't hit bottom for fully two more years.

The average mutual fund holding period for equity or fixed income is only about three years. It's too short.

My firm has 25,000 high-net-worth clients. A typical account would be that of a couple aged 65 and 60 who need their money to last the rest of their lives, 25 to 35 years.

Windmills and solar cells are carbon-free sources of electricity. But they are costly. If you've been investing in those, give it up. That game is effectively over.

If some stock categories get too hot-and-pricey, mass supply is created via stock offerings to tap that cheap money - and, when overdone, drives it all down.

Generally, variations in earnings aren't nearly as impactful on glamour growth stocks as are changes in image and, well, sexiness. I often think of glamour stocks as though they are attractive women dressing to the nines.

If you can predict where the market's going, just do what you can predict. If you can't, which is the presumption of dollar cost averaging or time cost averaging, either one, then you're trying to ease in. But if the market rises more than it falls most of the time, easing in is, by definition, a loser's game.

If you are prepared for some risk, junk bonds pay about 5%, but they tend to get whacked when interest rates rise. Same with lower-yielding but higher-quality corporate bonds.