Peter Lynch Quotes

Investing is fun and exciting, but dangerous if you don't do any work.

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.

The simpler it is, the better I like it.

Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.

Bargains are the holy grail of the true stockpicker. The fact that 10 to 30 percent of our net worth is lost in a market sell-off is of little consequence. We see the latest correction not as a disaster but as an opportunity to acquire more shares at low prices. This is how great fortunes are made over time.

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

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.

Invest in what you know.

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

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

Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it's doing.

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.

You just don't know when you can find the bottom.

In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

My high-tech aversion caused me to make fun of the typical biotech enterprise: $100 million in cash from selling shares, one hundred Ph.D.'s, 99 microscopes, and zero revenues.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, in business, so is a number.

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

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

If you're prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so the fifth grader won't get bored.

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.

There is always something to worry about. Avoid weekend thinking and ignoring the latest dire predictions of the newscasters. Sell a stock because the company's fundamentals deteriorate, not because the sky is falling.

Avoid hot stocks in hot industries.

What makes stocks valuable in the long run isn't the market. It's the profitability of the shares in the companies you own. As corporate profits increase, corporations become more valuable and sooner or later, their shares will sell for a higher price.

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.

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.

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

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.

The typical big winner in the Lynch portfolio generally takes three to ten years to play out.

You have to keep your priorities straight if you plan to do well in stocks.

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

My method for picking stocks has never changed. When businesses go from crappy to semicrappy, there's money to be made.

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.

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.

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 find a company that can get away with raising prices year after year without losing customers (an addictive product such as cigarettes fills the bill), you've got a terrific investment.

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.

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

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. You won't get there by reading 'Now is the time to buy.'

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.

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.

The most important organ in the body as far as the stock market is concerned is the guts, not the head. Anyone can acquire the know-how for analyzing stocks.

If you're lucky enough to have been rewarded in life to the degree that I have, there comes a point at which you have to decide whether to become a slave to your net worth by devoting the rest of your life to increasing it or to let what you've accumulated begin to serve you.

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

I don't know anyone who said on their deathbed: 'Gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'

There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.

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.

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.

I like to buy a company any fool can manage because eventually one will.