Peter Lynch Quotes

Owning stocks is like having children - don't get involved with more than you can handle.

There are substantial rewards for adopting a regular routine of investing and following it no matter what, and additional rewards for buying more shares when most investors are scared into selling.

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.

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.

I've always been a great lover of baseball.

If you can't find any companies that you think are attractive, put your money in the bank until you discover some.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Often, there is no correlation between the success of a company's operations and the success of its stock over a few months or even a few years. In the long term, there is a 100 percent correlation between the success of the company and the success of its stock. This disparity is the key to making money; it pays to be patient, and to own successful companies.

That's not to say there's no such thing as an overvalued market, but there's no point worrying about it.

The worst thing you can do is invest in companies you know nothing about. Unfortunately, buying stocks on ignorance is still a popular American pastime.

The natural-born investor is a myth.

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

When people discover they are no good at baseball or hockey, they put away their bats and their skates and they take up amateur golf or stamp collecting or gardening. But when people discover they are no good at picking stocks, they are likely to continue to do it anyway.

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

Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what's actually happening to the companies in which you've invested

The extravagance of any corporate office is directly proportional to management's reluctance to reward the shareholders.

Charts are great for predicting the past.

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.

The S&P is up 343.8 percent for 10 years. That is a four-bagger. The general equity funds are up 283 percent. So it's getting worse, the deterioration by professionals is getting worse. The public would be better off in an index fund.

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

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

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run 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 only need a few good stocks in your lifetime. I mean how many times do you need a stock to go up ten-fold to make a lot of money? Not a lot.

Investing in stocks is an art, not a science, and people who've been trained to rigidly quantify everything have a big disadvantage.

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.

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

More money is lost anticipating the changes in the overall stock market than any other way of investing.

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.

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.

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

Equity mutual funds are the perfect solution for people who want to own stocks without doing their own research.

Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.

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.

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

In business, competition is never as healthy as total domination.

The more cash that builds up in the treasury, the greater the pressure to piss it away.

Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach. If you are susceptible to selling everything in a panic, you ought to avoid stocks and mutual funds altogether.

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

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.

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.