Investor Quotes

“The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets - even if the blood is your own" - John D. Rockefeller

"Know what you own, and know why you own it." - Peter Lynch

"Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing." - Warren Buffett

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine." - Benjamin Graham

"Every once in a while, the market does something so stupid it takes your breath away." - Jim Cramer

"Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!" - Jack Bogle

“The minute you get away from the fundamentals -- whether it's proper technique, work ethic, or mental preparation -- the bottom can fall out of your game." - Michael Jordan

"If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring." - George Soros

"Smart investing doesn't consist of buying good assets, but of buying assets well. This is a very, very important distinction that very, very few people understand." - Howard Marks

"The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom. And, when all the experts and forecasts agree – something else is going to happen." - Bob Farrell

"By far the biggest problem for professionals in investing is dealing with career and business risk: protecting your own job as an agent. The second curse of professional investing is over-management caused by the need to be seen to be busy, to be earning your keep. The individual is far better-positioned to wait patiently for the right pitch while paying no regard to what others are doing, which is almost impossible for professionals." - Jeremy Grantham

"For all long-term investors, there is only one objective – maximum total real return after taxes."  - John Templeton

"Quantitatively based solutions and asset allocation equations invariably fail as they are designed to capture what would have worked in the previous cycle whereas the next one remains a riddle wrapped in an enigma." - Barton Biggs

"It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts." - Benjamin Graham

"The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing." – Philip Fisher

"In trading, you have to be defensive and aggressive at the same time. If you are not aggressive, you are not going to make money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep the money." – Ray Dalio

"You can’t develop a portfolio strategy around endless possibilities. You wouldn’t even get out of bed if you considered everything that could possibly happen, you can use history as one tool for shaping reasonable probabilities. Then, you look at the world of economic, sentiment and political drivers to determine what’s most likely to happen—while always knowing you can be and will be wrong a lot." - Ken Fisher

"Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful." - Warren Buffett

"The average long-term experience in investing is never surprising, but the short term experience is always surprising. We now know to focus not on rate of return, but on the informed management of risk." - Charles Ellis

“There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

"The market does reflect the available information, as the professors tell us. But just as the funhouse mirrors don't always accurately reflect your weight, the markets don't always accurately reflect that information. Usually they are too pessimistic when it's bad, and too optimistic when it's good." - Bill Miller

"Every business is manmade. It is a result of individuals. It reflects the personalities and the business philosophy of the founders and those who have directed its affairs throughout its existence. If you want to have an understanding of any business, it is important to know the background of the people who started it and directed its past and the hopes and ambitions of those who are planning its future." - Thomas Rowe Price Jr

"We have bloated bureaucracies in Corporate America. The root of the problem is the absence of real corporate democracy."  - Carl Icahn

"Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards.' - Peter Lynch

"It's not always easy to do what's not popular, but that's where you make your money. Buy stocks that look bad to less careful investors and hang on until their real value is recognized." - John Neff

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” - Albert Einstein

"If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing." - Henry Kravis 

"There is only one side of the market, and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side." - Jesse Lauriston Livermore

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago" - Warren Buffett

"The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside" - George Soros

"Commodities tend to zig when the equity markets zag." - James Rogers, Jr.

"The way I understand the rules on trading on inside information, it's very vague." - Steven Cohen

"An economy is simply the sum of the transactions that make it up. A transaction is a simple thing. Because there are a lot of them, the economy looks more complex than it really is. If instead of looking at it from the top down, we look at it from the transaction up, it is much easier to understand." - Ray Dalio

"I can calculate the movement of stars, but not the madness of men." - Isaac Newton

"Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap." - Benjamin Graham

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business."  - Henry Ford

"Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make." - Donald Trump

"After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world." - Calvin Coolidge

“If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value.” - Warren Buffett

"Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas."  - Paul Samuelson

"I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime request of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs."  - John D.

Rockefeller, Jr

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money." - Pablo Picasso

"And finally, no matter how good the science gets, there are problems that inevitably depend on judgment, on art, on a feel for financial markets." - Martin Feldstein

"As financial markets continue to broaden and deepen, the behavior of asset prices will play an important role in the formulation of monetary policy going forward, perhaps a more important role than in the past." - Timothy Geithner

"Being on a movie set is like one long financial crisis." - John Cusack

"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1." - Warren Buffett

"Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive." - Milton Friedman

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - John Maynard Keynes

"October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February."   - Mark Twain

"The four most dangerous words in investing are "This time it's different." - John Templeton

"If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn't be in stocks." - John Bogle

"It isn't as important to buy as cheap as possible as it is to buy at the right time." - Jesse Lauriston Livermore

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." - Warren Buffett

"Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception." - George Soros

"The price of a commodity will never go to zero. When you invest in commodities futures, you're not buying a piece of paper that says you own an intangible piece of company that can go bankrupt." - James Rogers, Jr.

"I always tell my traders that they would've loved the 1990s because it was a fairly easy time to make money." - Steven Cohen

"Blaming speculators as a response to financial crisis goes back at least to the Greeks. It's almost always the wrong response." - Larry Summers

"Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction." - Warren Buffett

"We've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous. So we use lots of things daily that are dangerous, but we generally pay some attention to how they're used. We tell the cars how fast they can go.' - Warren Buffett

"If I’d only followed CNBC’s advice, I’d have a million dollars today. Provided I’d started with a hundred million dollars." - Jon Stewart

"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?" - Ayn Rand

"Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is." - Oscar Wilde

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons." - Woody Allen

"If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion." - George Bernard Shaw

"When an investor focuses on short-term investments, he or she is observing the variability of the portfolio, not the returns - in short, being fooled by randomness." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"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. - Peter Lynch

"Most investors want to do today what they should have done yesterday." - Larry Summers

"Cash is a fact, profit is an opinion." - Alfred Rappaport

"Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells." - J. Paul Getty

"I don't like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves." - Joe Louis

"Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions." - A.A. Latimer

"Stock price movements actually begin to reflect new developments before it is generally recognized that they have taken place." - Arthur Zeikel

"A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street. But what effect would it have on the broader U.S. economy? If Wall Street crashes, does Main Street follow? Not necessarily." - Ben Bernanke

"A loss never bothers me after I take it. I forget it overnight. But being wrong - not taking the loss - that is what does damage to the pocketbook and to the soul." - Jesse Lauriston Livermore

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." - Warren Buffett

"The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they trend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium." - George Soros

"Get inside information from the president and you will probably lose half your money. If you get it from the chairman of the board, you will lose all of your money." - James Rogers, Jr.

"Tape reading is a lost art that today is not very useful." - Steven Cohen

"I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said." - Alan Greenspan

"The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World." - Paul Krugman

"Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone." -Sigmund Freud

"People don't like the idea of thinking long term. Many are desperately seeking short term answers because they have money problems to be solved today." - Robert Kiyosaki

"Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this." - Dave Ramsey

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler …” - Albert Einstein

“Bull markets are born on PESSIMISM, grow on SKEPTICISM, mature on OPTIMISM and die on EUPHORIA.” - Sir John Templeton

“That means buying stocks that have already had good moves and have high relative strength – that is, stocks in demand by other investors. I would much rather invest in a stock that’s increasing in price and take the risk that it may begin to decline than invest in a stock that’s already in a decline and try to guess when it will turn around.” - Richard Driehaus