Peter Lynch Quotes - Page 4

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

The biggest winners are surprises to me, and takeovers are even more surprising. It takes years, not months, to produce big results.

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

The basic story remains simple and never-ending. Stocks aren't lottery tickets. There's a company attached to every share.

Thousands of experts study overbought indicators, oversold indicators, head-and-shoulder patterns, put-call ratios, the Fed's policy on money supply, foreign investment, the movement of the constellations through the heavens, and the moss on oak trees, and they can't predict markets with any useful consistency, any more than the gizzard squeezers could tell the Roman emperors when the Huns would attack.

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

In stocks as in romance, ease of divorce is not a sound basis for commitment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The natural-born investor is a myth.

People who want to know how stocks fared on any given day ask, "Where did the Dow close?" I'm more interested in how many stocks went up versus how many went down. These so-called advance/decline numbers paint a more realistic picture.

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.'

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