Peter Lynch Quotes

Peter Lynch talks money in a straight-forward way, giving bite-size advice for anyone who worries about stocks.

27 quotes

1. If you spend more than 14 minutes a year worrying about the market, you've wasted 12 minutes.

2. The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game. And that's always been my philosophy.

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

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.'

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

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

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

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

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

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

18. When you sell in desperation, you always sell cheap.

19. 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.

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

21. 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.

22. 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.

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

24. 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.

25. In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.

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

27. 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.