34 Investing Quotes

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.

Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.

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

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.

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.'

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

My peculiarity is that I don't have a particular style of investing or, more exactly, I try to change my style to fit the conditions.

The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong. Even if my assumption is occasionally wrong, I use it as a working hypothesis. It does not follow that one should always go against the prevailing trend. On the contrary, most of the time the trend prevails; only occasionally are the errors corrected. It is only on those occasions that one should go against the trend. This line of reasoning leads me to look for the flaw in every investment thesis. ... I am ahead of the curve. I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd and look for a different investment thesis. Or, if I think the trend has been carried to excess, I may probe going against it. Most of the time we are punished if we go against the trend. Only at an inflection point are we rewarded.

'The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.'

'He really meant to tell them that the big money was not in the individual fluctuations but in the main movements that is, not in reading the tape but in sizing up the entire market and its trend.'

'Experience has proved to me that real money made in speculating has been in commitments in a stock or commodity showing a profit right from the start.'

Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality - but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

You attain superior long-term returns through preservation of capital and home runs. I'm not better than the next trader, just quicker at admitting my mistakes and moving on to the next opportunity.

'It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!'

'In a bull market your game is to buy and hold until you believe that the bull market is near its end.'

We [Emilio and I] have diversified: We run four restaurants, a hotel, a recording studio, a publishing company, and we have our corporate offices and a lot of other real estate.

I still think we're heading higher. The long-term types like me should sit tight. I don't really see any major problems. The only thing I don't like, of course, is still the narrowness of the advance. But, on the other hand, the Russell hit another high.

'Obviously the thing to do was to be bullish in a bull market and bearish in a bear market.'

'When I buy stocks for a rise I like to pay top prices and when I sell I must sell low or not at all.'

'If my stock does not act as I anticipated, I immediately determine that the time is not yet ripe - so I close out my commitment.'

'From my point of view, the investors are the big gamblers. They make a bet, stay with it, and if all goes wrong, they lose it all.'

I try to make money infrequently, as infrequently as possible simply because I believe that rare events are not fairly valued, and that the rarer the event, the more undervalued it will be in price.

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

If you see a Swiss banker jumping out of a window, follow him, there is sure to be 10% profit in it.

Four hundred seventy-three million to one. Those are the odds against George Soros compiling the investment record he did as manager of the Quantum Fund from 1968 through 1993. His investment record is the most unimpeachable refutation of the random walk hypothesis ever! ... History will probably remember Mr. Soros as the speculator who tilted against the Bank of England in 1992 (and freed the English people from recession). His billion dollar score is simply too compelling a story to overlook. Mr. Soros himself would probably like to be remembered as a great economist or even scientist. But I am going to remember him for something even more important, for which he does not receive the credit he deserves. he is someone who genuinely cares about the state of the human condition and tries to better it. His myriad and monumental philanthropical efforts will qualify him as one of history's great benefactors. ... He is a hands-on workaholic who materially impacts the quality of lives of people less fortunate than he. Now this, this is a sign of greatness.