Investing Quotes

Impact investing has become a broad umbrella that includes all investing with a focus on both financial return and social impact, but in its best form, impact investing prioritizes impact over returns and achieves outcomes that traditional investing cannot. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it. ~ Warren Buffett

Suppose it was demonstrated that one out of twenty alcoholics could learn to become a moderate social drinker. The experienced clinician would answer, 'Even if true, act as if it were false, for you will never identify that one in twenty, and in the attempt five in twenty will be ruined.' Investors should forsake the search for such tiny needles in huge haystacks. ~ Paul Samuelson

When you - when you - and this is still going on today - are making your money by pushing paper around, when you should be making your money by investing venture capital in various job-creating things, that makes it much harder to recover. ~ Howard Dean

There are only a few things investors can do to counteract risk: diversify adequately, hedge when appropriate, and invest with a margin of safety. It is a precisely because we do not and cannot know all the risks of an investment that we strive to invest at a discount. The bargain element helps to provide a cushion for when things go wrong. ~ Seth Klarman

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars. ~ Warren Buffett

One of the big problems with growth investing is that we can't estimate earnings very well. I really want to buy growth at value prices. I always look at trailing earnings when I judge stocks. ~ David Dreman

...there should be no place in a portfolio for hedge funds. There are lots of reasons, but the main one is simple: Investing in hedge funds is a great way to increase the odds of underperformance. ~ Peter Mallouk

Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. Once you are above the level of 25; once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing. ~ Warren Buffett

The most popular investing products are the worst ones for investors. ~ Robert Rolih

As Buffett has often observed, value investing is not a concept that can be learned and gradually applied over time. It is either absorbed and adopted at once, or it is never truly learned. ~ Seth Klarman

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka

Get inside information from the president and you will probably lose half your money. If you get it from the chairman of the board, you will lose all of your money. ~ Jim Rogers

Value investing strategies have worked for years and everyone's known about them. They continue to work because it's hard for people to do, for two main reasons. First, the companies that show up on the screens can be scary and not doing so well, so people find them difficult to buy. Second, there can be one-, two- or three-year periods when a strategy like this doesn't work. Most people aren't capable of sticking it out through that. ~ Joel Greenblatt

If a candidate for office starts talking about thinning the deer population or investing in barriers to reduce the number of deer on the highways, the other side will probably just ignore him, because they're not going to know what to say about it. But there is a chance that the issue will resonate with voters in an unexpected way. ~ Bill James

Ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil and is an important weapon in the War on Terror. By investing in South Dakota's ethanol producers, we will strengthen our energy security and create new jobs. ~ John Thune

This idea of anticipation is key to investing and to business generally. You can't wait for an opportunity to become obvious. You have to think, "Here's what other people and companies have done under certain circumstances. Now, under these new circumstances, how is this management likely to behave?" ~ Edward Lampert

I've felt for some time that economics needs to be taught differently by economists who actually have had experience making a payroll or investing on Wall Street. When economics is taught by pure academics, watch out. ~ Mark Skousen

McCain said the lower gas prices were sitting somewhere under the Gulf of Mexico. Obama said they were sitting in the bank accounts of companies like Exxon in the form of windfall profits to be taxed.

The formula was the same formula we see in every election: Republicans demonize government, sixties-style activism, and foreigners. Democrats demonize corporations, greed, and the right-wing rabble.

Both candidates were selling the public a storyline that had nothing to do with the truth. Gas prices were going up for reasons completely unconnected to the causes these candidates were talking about. What really happened was that Wall Street had opened a new table in its casino. The new gaming table was called commodity index investing. And when it became the hottest new game in town, America suddenly got a very painful lesson in the glorious possibilities of taxation without representation. Wall Street turned gas prices into a gaming table, and when they hit a hot streak we ended up making exorbitant involuntary payments for a commodity that one simply cannot live without. ~ Matt Taibbi

Successful investing is about having people agree with you ... later. ~ James Grant

They'd had so much more luck investing in eccentric B and C students. The rationale was simple: Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it - and were often tainted by it. Especially when success and peer approval beckoned. One did not accidentally graduate from top-tier schools. One strove to get in and to maintain grades once there, and to do that, one usually needed to be a master at conformity. To excel in all the accepted conventions. ~ Daniel Suarez

I'm not sure at all that I'm any good at this mentoring/investing business - that's why I'm using my own money, and that's why it's not a career. ~ Jerry Yang

If some lose their whole fortunes, they will drag many more down with them ... believe me that the whole system of credit and finance which is carried on here at Rome in the Forum, is inextricably bound up with the revenues of the Asiatic province. If Those revenues are destroyed, our whole system of credit will come down with a crash. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC's are investing, it's in people who understand what it takes, who've been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together. ~ Tony Fadell

Ben was a very simple straightforward man with a brilliant quick mind. ~ Walter Schloss

When it comes to solving problems of poverty, impact investing can act as a catalyst, but it is not a silver bullet. Successful businesses serving the poor need more than investment capital. They also need infrastructure to enable effective distribution, strong regulatory systems, access to markets, technical assistance as they scale up, and more ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

The major fortunes in America have been made in land. ~ John D. Rockefeller

If you invested in a very low cost index fund - where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time. ~ Warren Buffett

Do you know what investing for the long run but listening to market news everyday is like? It's like a man walking up a big hill with a yo-yo and keeping his eyes fixed on the yo-yo instead of the hill. ~ Alan Abelson

Sometimes it's not about making a ton of money in one night, just to spend the rest of your life waiting on the next payday. You will fare better investing time, planning, strategic thinking in order to secure a stable, fruitful future. ~ Carlos Wallace

Most of the mutual fund investments I have are index funds, approximately 75%. ~ Charles R. Schwab

Things are temporary, relationships last forever. Nothing can replace the time we spend investing in the life of another. ~ Roy Lessin

A man must study general conditions, to seize them so as to be able to anticipate probabilities. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote. ~ Philip Dormer Stanhope

It is surely the following kinds of question that would need to be posed:

What types of knowledge do you want to disqualify in the very instant of your demand: 'Is it a science'? Which speaking, discoursing subjects -which subjects of experience and knowledge - d you then want to 'diminish' when you say: 'I who conduct this discourse am conducting a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist'? Which theoretical-political avant garde do you want to enthrone in order to isolate it from all the discontinuous forms of knowledge that circulate about it? When I see you straining to establish the scientificity of Marxism I do not really think that you are demonstrating once and for all that Marxism has a rational structure and that therefore its propositions are the outcome of verifiable procedures; for me you are doing something altogether different, you are investing Marxist discourses and those who uphold them with the effects of a power which the West since Medieval times has attributed to science and has reserved for those engaged in scientific discourse. ~ Michel Foucault

Money is ultimately never enough compensation for investing one's time and energy. There must be a sense of purpose, meaning, and accomplishment. ~ Dan Miller

Even people who feel perfectly comfortable investing in the stock market and owning their own homes often have qualms about individual medical accounts or Social Security private accounts. ~ Jacob Hacker

Now, one thing I tell everyone is learn about real estate. Repeat after me: real estate provides the highest returns, the greatest values and the least risk. ~ Armstrong Williams

The good news is, the stock market is closed and it can't hurt us again until tomorrow. ~ Jay Leno

When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits. ~ Warren Buffett

If we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them. ~ George Soros

Never give up searching for the job that you are passionate about ~ Warren Buffett

Transformation in the world happens when people are healed and start investing in other people. ~ Michael W. Smith

You don't need to chase wealth, just become a real entrepreneur and the world is your oyster. ~ Amah Lambert

There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Time Progression: Wasting >>Spending >> Managing >> Investing ~ Elizabeth Grace Saunders

A thoughtful investment process contemplates both probability and payoffs and carefully considers where the consensus - as revealed by a price - may be wrong. Even though there are also some important features that make investing different than, say, a casino or the track, the basic idea is the same: you want the positive expected value on your side ~ Michael Mauboussin

The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing. ~ David Tepper

In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard. ~ Warren Buffett

It is crucial to have a strategy in place before problems hit, precisely because no one can accurately predict the future direction of the stock market or economy. Value investing, the strategy of buying stocks at an appreciable discount from the value of the underlying businesses, is one strategy that provides a road map to successfully navigate not only through good times but also through turmoil. ~ Seth Klarman

Doubting yourself can be the biggest factor in holding yourself back. If you don't believe in yourself and send messages to yourself that you can't do this, or you will never be able to do this, you won't be successful. If you carry this attitude with you, then no, you won't be successful. Change your thinking! Change is not always easy, but once you change your thinking from negative to positive, your doubts begin to go away and you begin to manifest the positive. Don't doubt yourself! ~ Monica Breckenridge

Modern amorists are sometimes taken aback at the prospect of investing in a relationship with no guarantee of reward. It is precisely that absence, however, that separates gift from shrewdness. Love cannot be extracted, commanded, demanded, or wheedled. It can only be given. (208) ~ Thomas Lewis

Mr. Denzi can teach us all something about accumulating wealth. Begin earning and investing early in your adult life. That will enable you to outpace the wealth accumulation levels of even the so-called gifted kids from your high school class. Remember, wealth is blind. ~ Thomas J. Stanley

I look at two things while angel investing. Are you solving an important problem? Do you care about the end users. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Make sure you have the courage to stay true to your convictions and not let the market affect your emotions. ~ Walter Schloss

The only product that's worth investing in is a fully functional musculoskeletal system. It's no luxury but rather a basic necessity that's within everyone's reach. ~ Pete Egoscue

I think investing in a good education has been key for me, although the investment was more in time than money. ~ Nouriel Roubini

Poverty is a mindset: It creates that sense of scarcity. You then become accustomed to it such that your life is hinged on protecting the scarce resources that you have. However, you can only create a mindset of abundance by investing what you have and not savings. Savings only becomes significant if it's done with a motive to invest. ~ Oscar Bimpong

The U.S. can still maintain research institutions, such as Caltech, that are the envy of the world, yet it would be hubristic and naive to think that this position is sustainable without investing in science education and basic research. ~ Ahmed Zewail

I was convinced that I was totally incompetent in predicting market prices - but that others were generally incompetent also but did not know it, or did not know they were taking massive risks. Most traders were just "picking pennies in front of a steamroller," exposing themselves to the high-impact rare event yet sleeping like babies, unaware of it. ~ Nassem Nicholas Taleb

When we're considering investing in a startup, we first want to know that the entrepreneur has a clear understanding of the market. Who are the major players? What about this market is ripe for disruption? What is this startup's unfair advantage to disrupt this market? In the first conversation we have with a company, these are questions that we're looking for clear answers to. ~ Mike Belsito

Hint: money flows into most funds after good performance, and goes out when bad performance follows. ~ John C. Bogle

For centuries I have thought all my despair is grief. But people get over grief. They get over even the most serious grief in a matter of years. If not get over then at least live beside. And the way they do this is by investing in other people, through friendship, through family, through teaching, through love. ~ Matt Haig

Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point. ~ Mark Twain

Many of the biggest and most far-reaching investments we make in our lives are investments that have little or nothing to do with money. ~ Daniel Quinn

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

I don't care what people think of me as a person, but I do care what people think of my work, and whether I'm investing enough into it. ~ Sam Worthington

Investing today may well be harder than it has been at any time in our three decades of existence, ~ Seth Klarman

Cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless. ~ Warren Buffett

When stock prices are rising, it's called "momentum investing"; when they are falling, it's called "panic". ~ Paul Krugman

I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there's a package there that's very, very good, ~ Newt Gingrich

Someone who seeks low-risk investments never really feels investing is safe and someone who is always right eventually winds up wrong ~ Robert Kiyosaki

Yes, your jewelry choices make a difference. When you invest in ethical, heirloom-quality jewelry, you're also investing in the future. Your purchase supports a creative community of like-minded humanitarians, out there doing important work. ~ Zoe Helene

Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger than man. ~ Sophocles

The essence of effective portfolio construction is the use of a large number of poorly correlated assets. ~ William J. Bernstein

The propensity to swindle grows parallel with the propensity to speculate during a boom the implosion of an asset price bubble always leads to the discovery of frauds and swindles ~ Charles P. Kindleberger

Some kinds of stocks are easier to analyse than others. ~ Walter Schloss

I've learned that each mistake was probably a reflection of something that I was (or others were) doing wrong, so if I could figure out what that was, I could learn how to be more effective. ~ Ray Dalio

I was encouraged to break all the rules but to take the best of philanthropy, the best of investing, and the best of development finance, and experiment with new ways to create this venture capital model of using philanthropy to back patient capital investments, and then build solutions that were measured in terms of the kind of impact and change they were making on people's lives and in the world, not just on the financial return. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available,with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States. ~ John Maynard Keynes

As a bull market continues, almost anything you buy goes up. It makes you feel that investing in stocks is a very easy and safe and that you're a financial genius. ~ Ron Chernow

The Present is the womb of the future.
A greater future happiness can be had only by investing in the present correctly.
Look after the present and the future will look after itself. ~ Chinmayananda Saraswati

Never invest in a business you can't understand ~ Warren Buffett

I think that, every time you saw the word EBITDA, you should substitute the word "bullshit" earnings. ~ Charlie Munger

The recent trading environment has felt something like walking into a place and having a sense that something is wrong and dangerous but not knowing exactly what will happen or when. "QE Infinity" has so distorted the prices of stocks and bonds that nobody can possibly determine what the investing landscape would look like, or what the condition of the economy and financial system would be, in the absence of Fed bond-buying. ~ Paul Singer

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public ~ Mark Twain

Looking at ourselves through the eyes of those living in places where human tragedy is still embedded in complex religious and cultural narratives, we get a glimpse of our modern selves as a deeply insecure and fearful people. We are investing our great wealth in researching and treating this disorder because we have rather suddenly lost other belief systems that once gave meaning and context to our suffering. ~ Ethan Watters

Nearly every time I strayed from the herd, I've made a lot of money. Wandering away from the action is the way to find the new action. ~ Jim Rogers

The world belongs to optimists; the pessimists are only spectators. ~ Francois Guizot

I'm a big believer that as much as possible, and there's obviously political limitations, freedom of migration is a good thing. ~ Bill Gates

By periodically investing in an index fund, the know-nothing investors can actually outperform most investment professionals. ~ Warren Buffett

Time well spent leads to life well lived. ~ Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

Jewish families encourage pursuit of wealth accumulation, high-income careers, and investing. ~ H.W. Charles

Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator. ~ Seth Klarman

I believe the only things that really matter in investing are the bubbles and the busts ~ Jeremy Grantham

So instead of investing your time in a passion, you've sold your life to work for an uncaring machine that doesn't understand you. That's the problem with our society. And what's the reward? Go home and get a big TV. ~ Joe Rogan

That is why success and fruitfulness depend as much upon focusing on the "who" you are as much as the "what" of the work you do. Invest in your character, and it will give you the returns that you are looking for by only investing in the work itself. You can't do the latter without the former. ~ Henry Cloud

It's about time we make the well-being of our young people more important than ideology and politics. As a country, we benefit from investing in their future by investing in teen pregnancy prevention. ~ Jane Fonda

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. ~ Sigmund Freud

To my knowledge there are no good records that have been built by institutions run by committee. In almost all cases the great records are the product of individuals, perhaps working together, but always within a clearly defined framework. Their names are on the door and they are quite visible to the investing public. In reality outstanding records are made by dictators, hopefully benevolent, but nonetheless dictators. ~ Peter Cundill