Peter Lynch Quotes

You can't see the future through a rearview mirror

Find something you enjoy doing and give it everything you've got, and the money will take care of itself.

There's no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating.

In the summer of 1990, I was buying stocks and I was probably three or four months early there. But we had a great rally in 1991.

The junior high schools and high schools of America have forgotten to teach one of the most important courses of all. Investing.

If you can follow only one bit of data, follow the earnings - assuming the company in question has earnings. I subscribe to the crusty notion that sooner or later earnings make or break an investment in equities. What the stock price does today, tomorrow, or next week is only a distraction.

If you go to Minnesota in January, you should know that it's gonna be cold. You don't panic when the thermometer falls below zero.

Your investor's edge is not something you get from Wall Street experts. It's something you already have. You can outperform the experts if you use your edge by investing in companies or industries you already understand.

You have to let the big ones make up for your mistakes.

Spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would choosing a refrigerator.

The natural-born investor is a myth.

The list of qualities (an investor should have) include patience, self-reliance, common sense, a tolerance for pain, open-mindedness, detachment, persistence, humility, flexibility, a willingness to do independent research, an equal willingness to admit mistakes, and the ability to ignore general panic.

Never invest in a company without understanding its finances. The biggest losses in stocks come from companies with poor balance sheets.

I've always been a great lover of baseball.

You can find good reasons to scuttle your equities in every morning paper and on every broadcast of the nightly news.

The basic story remains simple and never-ending. Stocks aren't lottery tickets. There's a company attached to every share.

It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.

The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.

I can't recall ever once having seen the name of a market timer on Forbes' annual list of the richest people in the world. If it were truly possible to predict corrections, you'd think somebody would have made billions by doing it.

Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.

Invest in businesses any idiot could run, because someday one will.

Your ultimate success or failure will depend on your ability to ignore the worries of the world long enough to allow your investments to succeed.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Suicide is a choice and I think if we work with that with kids, we'll get somewhere.

You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets.

Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon

The biggest winners are surprises to me, and takeovers are even more surprising. It takes years, not months, to produce big results.

Absent a lot of surprises, stocks are relatively predictable over twenty years. As to whether they're going to be higher or lower in two to three years, you might as well flip a coin to decide.

I've always said, the key organ here isn't the brain, it's the stomach. When things start to decline - there are bad headlines in the papers and on television - will you have the stomach for the market volatility and the broad-based pessimism that tends to come with it?

I don't go near the money and the money doesn't go near me.

The Rule of 72 is useful in determining how fast money will grow. Take the annual return from any investment, expressed as a percentage, and divide it into 72. The result is the number of years it will take to double your money.

But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.

Gentlemen who prefer bonds don't know what they're missing.

I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That's crystal ball stuff. That doesn't work.

Hold no more stocks than you can remain informed on.

Improved turnout will give parliament and government the appearance of being more legitimate.

An important key to investing is to remember that stocks are not lottery tickets.

As I look back on it now, it's obvious that studying history and philosophy was much better preparation for the stock market than, say, studying statistics.

I spend about fifteen minutes a year on economic analysis.

It's human nature to keep doing something as long as it's pleasurable and you can succeed at it - which is why the world population continues to double every 40 years.

Long-term investing has gotten so popular, it's easier to admit you're a crack addict than to admit you're a short-term investor.

Charts are great for predicting the past.

Most investors would be better off in an index fund.

Never buy anything that you can't illustrate on the back of a napkin.

Long shots almost always miss the mark.

Twenty years in this business convinces me that any normal person using the customary three percent of the brain can pick stocks just as well, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert.

Invest in what you know.

When you start to confuse Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae and Fannie Mae with members of your family, and you remember 2,000 stock symbols but forget the children's birthdays, there's a good chance you've become too wrapped up in your work.

A price drop in a good stock is only a tragedy if you sell at that price and never buy more. To me, a price drop is an opportunity to load up on bargains from among your worst performers and your laggards that show promise. If you can't convince yourself 'When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a buyer' and banish forever the fatal thought 'When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a seller,' then you'll never make a decent profit in stocks.

If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it wouldn't be a bad thing.

I think you have to learn that there's a company behind every stock, and that there's only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.

A stock market decline is as routine as a January blizzard in Colorado. If you're prepared, it can't hurt you. A decline is a great opportunity to pick up the bargains left behind by investors who are fleeing the storm in panic.

I've found that when the market's going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy.

Debt is saving in reverse. The more it builds up, the worse off you are.

All the math you need in the stock market you get in the fourth grade.

During the Gold Rush, most would-be miners lost money, but people who sold them picks, shovels, tents and blue-jeans (Levi Strauss) made a nice profit.

So while I was in college I did a little study on the freight industry, the air freight industry. And I looked at this company called Flying Tiger. And I actually put a thousand dollars in it and I remember I thought this air cargo was going to be a thing of the future.

There's lots of stocks out there and all you need is a few of 'em. That's been my philosophy.

When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30. You just don't know when you can find the bottom.

You shouldn't just pick a stock - you should do your homework.

Visiting stores and testing products is one of the critical elements of the analyst's job.

In the long run, it's not just how much money you make that will determine your future prosperity. It's how much of that money you put to work by saving it and investing it.

All the time and effort people devote to picking the right fund, the hot hand, the great manager have, in most cases, led to no advantage.

You should not buy a stock because it's cheap but because you know a lot about it.

I'm always fully invested. It's a great feeling to be caught with your pants up.

The old Wall Street adage "never invest in anything that eats or needs repairs" may apply to racehorses, but it's malarkey when it comes to houses.

I talk to hundreds of companies a year and spend hour after hour in heady pow-wows with CEOs, financial analysts and my colleagues in the mutual-fund business, but I stumble onto the big winners in extracurricular situations, the same way you do.

Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of 'em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that's the promise to some people.

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

People who succeed in the stock market also accept periodic losses, setbacks, and unexpected occurrences. Calamitous drops do not scare them out of the game.

It only takes a handful of big winners to make a lifetime of investing worthwhile.

Time is on your side when you own shares of superior companies.

Whenever you invest in any company, you're looking for its market cap to rise. This can't happen unless buyers are paying higher prices for the shares, making your investment more valuable.

Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket ... it's part-ownership of a business.

Searching for companies is like looking for grubs under rocks: if you turn over 10 rocks you'll likely find one grub; if you turn over 20 rocks you'll find two.

Imagine if you borrowed your parents' car without permission and ran it into a tree, how much better you'd feel if you were incorporated.

When even the analysts are bored, it's time to start buying.

If you spend more than 13 minutes analyzing economic and market forecasts, you've wasted 10 minutes

When management owns stock, then rewarding the shareholders becomes a first priority, whereas when management simply collects a paycheck, then increasing salaries becomes a first priority.

There's a company behind every stock and a reason companies - and their stocks - perform the way they do.

Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.

Know what you own, and know why you own it.

In other words, I continue to think like an amateur as frequently as possible. GOING IT ALONE

In stocks as in romance, ease of divorce is not a sound basis for commitment.

All you need for a lifetime of successful investing is a few big winners, and the pluses from those will overwhelm the minuses from the stocks that don't work out.

Everyone has the brain power to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach.

Stocks you trade, it's wives you're stuck with.

In our society, it's been the men who've handled most of the finances, and the women who've stood by and watched men botch things up.

A lot of people got in at the wrong time. A lot of people did very well and some people said, "This is it. I'll never get back in again." And they maybe meant it, but they probably got back in again anyway.

If you hope to have more money tomorrow than you have today, you've got to put a chunk of your assets into stocks. Sooner or later, a portfolio of stocks or stock mutual funds will turn out to be a lot more valuable than a portfolio of bonds or CDs or money-market funds.

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon