Peter Lynch Quotations

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

But my system for over 30 years has been this: 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.

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

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.

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

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

Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket... it's part-ownership of a business.

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.

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.

I don't go near the money and the money doesn't go near me.

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.'

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.

I've always been a great lover of baseball.

Improved turnout will give parliament and government the appearance of being more legitimate.

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.

We're not budgeting for it to do that. We think that it is possible that into our coffers you could probably push 8 or 10 million (euros) EBITDA ...but I think it's probably not the right thing to do in this period of consolidation.

People want to know 'what is my cost.' Period.

People were writing off California a couple of years ago, now they have a massive surplus. Canada is running its first surplus in 20 years and Mexico is doing well. Wouldn't you have been shocked if someone told you that the U.S. would have been running a surplus?

People have been looking for recessions for the last five years,

I think Coca-Cola needs a rest. Some phases of the market, some of the big stocks are in that category.

We have concluded that a sale of our Bahamian operation is in the company's best interest as we continue to sharpen our focus on successfully implementing our business plan and preparing to emerge from Chapter 11. Although the 12 stores in the Bahamas are profitable, they are not a core business for us.

The only thing that we're going to say is that our client has been arraigned. We've continued a not-guilty plea as we have all along. We intend to vigorously defend this case and we will see you at trial.

I spend about 15 minutes a year on economic analysis. The way you lose money in the stock market is to start off with an economic picture. I also spend 15 minutes a year on where the stock market is going.

People have all this data and they go through it and make up their minds in four seconds, ... We're forcing people to do the wrong things. They look at what's hot. They spend so much time trying to figure out if the market is going up. That's so unimportant. It's about earnings. They need to follow the earnings.

It's absolute crap that people need to spend 60 hours a week analyzing companies, ... All you need are a few stocks to make money. If you find one stock a year, that's plenty. When I was running Magellan I had to find one a week but that was because I had billions of dollars. The average person needs only a few good stocks in a lifetime.

It's selling now at 35 times what they're going to earn in 1998 and over 25 times what they're going to earn in the year 2000. There's some relationship between what a company earns and what they grow at.

Creating a smaller, but more profitable store base will best position Winn-Dixie for long-term financial health and a successful future,

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.

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.

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

There's no use diversifying into unknown companies just for the sake of diversity. A foolish diversity is the hobgoblin of small investors. That said, it isn't safe to own just one stock, because in spite of your best efforts, the one you choose might be the victim of unforeseen circumstances. In small portfolios, I'd be comfortable owning between three and ten stocks.

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

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.

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.

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

Long shots almost always miss the mark.

Stocks are a safe bet, but only if you stay invested long enough to ride out the corrections.

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.

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

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

All the math you need in the stock market you get in the fourth grade.

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

Just because you buy a stock and it goes up does not mean you are right. Just because you buy a stock and it goes down does not mean you are wrong.

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.

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

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

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.

If you have the stomach for stocks, but neither the time nor the inclination to do the homework, invest in equity mutual funds.

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.

The natural-born investor is a myth.

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.

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.

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

Hold no more stocks than you can remain informed on.

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

I spend about fifteen minutes a year on economic analysis.

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

The simpler it is, the better I like it.

Invest in businesses any idiot could run, because someday one will.

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

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

You have to let the big ones make up for your mistakes.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The list of qualities (an investor should have) include patience, self-reliance, common sense, a tolerance for pain, open-mindedness, detachment, persistence, humility, flexibility, a willingness to do independent research, an equal willingness to admit mistakes, and the ability to ignore general panic.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.

Your ultimate success or failure will depend on your ability to ignore the worries of the world long enough to allow your investments to succeed.

The Rule of 72 is useful in determining how fast money will grow. Take the annual return from any investment, expressed as a percentage, and divide it into 72. The result is the number of years it will take to double your money.

It only takes a handful of big winners to make a lifetime of investing worthwhile.

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

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.

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon

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

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

Invest in what you know.

You can't see the future through a rearview mirror

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

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.

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