Stock Market Quotes

'In business you can succeed if you have intelligence, initiative and integrity. But without the last, the first two might kill you' - Warren Buffett

'Bull Markets are born on pessimism, grow on scepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria' - Sir John Templeton, Founder of Templeton Funds & Philanthropist (1912-2008)

'The measure of success is not whether you have a problem to deal with but whether it's the same problem as you had last year'  -  John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State (1955-1959)

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

'The Stockmarket is a reliable indicator of where the economy is headed, but you’ll get no help looking at it the other way around'   -   Ralph Wanger

'Few of us learn in a vacuum'   -   David Dreman, Contrarian Investment Strategies

'It is wise to remember that success or failure are not necessarily permanent conditions' - Anon

'I have learned that only through focus can you achieve world-class things, no matter how capable you are'  -  William H. Gates (Microsoft Founder, Fortune Mag. - July 8, 2002)

'Risk is good. Not properly managing your risk is a dangerous leap'   -   Evel Knievel, Motorcylist

'If you want a friend in business, get a dog'   -   Carl Ican

'A Sound Banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him'  -  John Maynard Keynes, British Economist (1883 – 1946)

'Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long term values'   -   Warren Buffett

'A stock that is growing at 20% per annum reliably is a jewel beyond belief'   -   Jim Slater, Beyond the Zulu Principle

'The approach to stock selection can be by way of prediction or protection'   -   Ben Graham, The Intelligent Investor

'It is neither necessary nor possible to understand markets; but it is essential you come to terms with them' - Brian Marber, Marber on Markets (2007)

'Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, so make the best of today'  -  Bill Cullen, It's a Long Way From Penny Apples, 2001

'The Sweetness of low price is soon forgotten; but the bitterness of poor quality is long remembered'  -  Anonymous

'Had Sir Isaac Newton, the great scientist, not lost a small fortune in the South Sea Bubble of 1721, he might have gone on to discover the fourth law of motion – that for investors as a group, returns decrease as motion increases,   -   Warren Buffett

'Analysts should be critics of companies, not mouthpieces for them'   -   David Dreman, Contrarian Investment Strategies

'The Stockmarket is the best guide as to the likely economic and business conditions ahead but you will get nowhere looking at it the other way around'   -   Bill Miller, US Fund Manager, Legg Mason

'Lose your opinion, not your money'   -   Anon

'You can’t tell who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out'   -   Warren Buffett

'People are always asking me where the outlook is good, but that's the wrong question. The right question is: where is the outlook miserable?'  -  Sir John Templeton

'I rarely think the market is right. I believe non dividend stocks aren’t much more than baseball cards. They are worth what you can convince someone to pay for them'   -   Mark Cuban

'If you can meet with Triump and Disaster, amd treat those two imposters both the same'  -  Rudyard Kipling, Poet & Novelist (1865 - 1936)

'As long as you enjoy investing, you'll be willing to do the homework and stay in the game. That's why I try to make the show so entertaining, because if you aren't interested, you'll either miss the opportunity to make money in the market or not pay enough attention and end up losing your shirt'   -   Jim Cramer

'When you combine ignorance and leverage you get some pretty interesting results'   -   Warren Buffett

'A loss never bothers me once I have taken it. It is being wrong and not cutting a loss that damages both the pocket book and the soul'   -   Jesse Livermore

'The trouble, in my opinion, with corporate America today, is that everything is thought of in quarters'   -   Henry Kravis 
 
'The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight'   -   Jesse Livermore

'The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable - John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian/American Economist & Diplomat, 1908-2006

'Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you'd be content to own it in the absence of a market'   -   Warren Buffett

'Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand'!  -  Confucius. Chinese Philosopher, 551-478 BC         

'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'   -   Peter Lynch

'The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios. The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market'   -   George Soros

'I look for companies that are like castles with deep moats around them full of crocodiles'   -   Warren Buffett

'Market risk tends to be poorly rewarded when market valuations are rich and interest rates are rising'  -  John P. Hussman, Hussman Funds

'To know values is to know the meaning of the market'  -  Charles Dow, Co-founder of the Wall Street Journal

'Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs'   -   George Soros

'With enough inside information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year'   -   Warren Buffett

'Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is a ridiculous one'  -  Voltaire

'The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing'   -   Philip Fisher

'To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are avidly buying requires the greatest of fortitude and pays the greatest ultimate reward'  -  Sir John Templeton

'Try to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy'   -   Warren Buffett

'I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position'   -   Mark Twain

'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'   -   Peter Lynch

'If the models are telling you to sell, sell, sell and there are only buyers out there, don't be a jerk, BUY!'  -  William Silber, Ph.D. (New York University, Newsweek, 1986)

'In this game, the market has to keep pitching, but you don’t have to swing. You can stand there with the bat on your shoulder for six months until you get a fat pitch'   -   Warren Buffett

'Wall Street's graveyards are filled with men who were right too soon'  -  William Hamilton

‘There are two possible ways to take advantage of the recurring wide fluctuations in stock prices, by way of timing or by way of pricing’   -   Ben Graham, The Intelligent Investor

'A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'  -  Oscar Wilde (Irish-born writer & wit, 1845-1900)

'Equity analysts continually load up on facts to back their case. But this makes them prone to serious error'   -   David Dreman, Contrarian Investment Strategies

'When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact' - Warren Buffett

'Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed'   -   Benjamin Graham

'In the short term the market is a voting machine, in the long term it is a weighting machine'   -   Benjamin Graham

'Avoid the Nasdaq like the plague'  -  David Dreman (1998)

'Don't be afriad to take big leaps, you can't cross a chasm in two small steps'  -  David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister (1915-1922)

'I follow the line of least resistance'   -   Jesse Livermore

'It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong'   -   George Soros

'The average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think'   -   Jesse Livermore

'Investors continually and predictably overreact to both good and bad news with equal measure'   -   David Dreman

'You pay a heavy price for a cheery consensus on Wall Street'  -  Warren Buffett

'I never hesitate to tell a man that I am bullish or bearish. But I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock. In a bear market all stocks go down and in a bull market they go up'   -   Jesse Livermore

'The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them'   -   Peter Lynch

'The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell'   -   John Templeton

'We go to the movies to be entertained, not to see rape, ransacking, pillage and looting. We can get all that in the stock market'  -  Kennedy Gammage, The Richland Report, 1925-2006

'It's human nature to find patterns where there are none and to find skill where luck is a more likely explanation'   -   William Bernstein

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

'The four most dangerous words in investing are ‘This time it's different’'   -   Sir John Templeton

'The essence of effective portfolio construction is the use of a large number of poorly correlated assets'   -   William Bernstein

'Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause their stock to be misappraised'   -   Warren Buffet

'The most predictable thing about the stock market is the number of experts who take credit for predicting it'   -   Dave Weinbaum

'Astronomic price earnings ratios rarely last for long, as they thrive on excessive hope and for that reason the most has to be made of them while they persist'   -   Jim Slater

'90% of the people in the stock market, professionals and amateurs alike, simply haven’t done enough homework'   -   William J.O’Neil

'The problem with the person who thinks he’s a long-term investor and impervious to short-term gyrations is that the emotion of fear and pain will eventually make him sell badly'   -   Robert Wibbelsmen

'The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money'   -   A.J. Liebling

'You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right - and that’s the only thing that makes you right'   -   Warren Buffett

'I know from experience that nobody can give me a tip or a series of tips that will make more money for me than my own judgment'   -   Jesse Livermore

'The investor’s chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself'   -   Peter Lynch

'Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it'   -   Warren Buffett

'There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don’t know where the market is headed, and those who don’t know that they don’t know. Then again, there is a third type of investor - the investment professional, who indeed knows that he or she doesn’t know, but whose livelihood depends upon appearing to know'   -   William Bernstein

'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

'I am not so concerned about the return on my capital as I am the return of my capital'  -  Will Rogers

'If your broker [or investment advisor] is not familiar with the concept of standard deviation of returns, get a new one'   -   William Bernstein

'Investors must keep in mind that there’s a difference between a good company and a good stock. After all, you can buy a good car but pay too much for it'   -   Richard Thaler

'Buy on the cannons, sell on the trumpets'   -   Old French Proverb

'Design a portfolio you are not likely to trade… akin to premarital counselling advice; try to build a portfolio that you can live with for a long, long time'   -   Robert D. Arnott

'There are three classes of people who don’t think markets work: the Cubans, the North Koreans and the active fund managers'   -   Rex Sinquefield, Dimensional Fund Managers

'It is difficult to find a portfolio manager who will continue to provide superior performance after he is retained'   -   Eugene B. Burroughs

'Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make'   -   Donald Trump

'Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not translate into obvious profits for investors'   -   Benjamin Graham

'I know of only one sure tip from a stockboker - a margin call'  -  Jesse Livermore

'To be sucessful most investors need  a sound framework for making decisions and the ability to keep your emotions from corroding that framework'   -   Warren Buffett

'Volatility is greatest at the turns'   -   George Soros

'Capitalism without bankruptcy is like christianity without hell'  -  Frank Borman, CEO Eastern Airlines, April 1986

'If I have to depend on hope in a trade, I get out of it'  -  Jesse Livermore (1877-1940)

'Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks'  -  Warren Buffett

'The reason traditional (fund) management doesn't well is that human decision making is systematically flawed and unreliable. The door is open to those who use a rational, disciplined method to buy and sell stocks on the basis of time-tested methods'  -  James O'Shaughnessy, What Works on Wall Street

'What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.'  -  Henry Louis Mencken, American Journalist & Essayist (1880 - 1956)

'In the past, Wall Street (stockbrokers) has mainly thrived on speculation, and stock-market speculators as a group were almost certain to lose money. Hence, it has been logically impossible for brokerage houses to operate on a thoroughly professional basis. To do that would have required them to direct their efforts to reducing rather than increasing their business' - Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor, 1949 

'To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all.' - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

'Order and simplification are the first steps towards mastery of a subject'.  -  Thomas Mann, German Novelist & Philanthropist (1875-1955)

'Successful investing isn't alchemy; it's a simple matter of consistently using time-tested strategies and letting compounding work its magic.'  -  James O'Shaughnessy, What Works on Wall Street, 1996

'If banking institutions are protected by the taxpayer and they are given free reign to speculate, I may not live long enough to see the crisis, but my soul will come back and haunt you'.  -  Paul A. Volcker (Fed Chairman, 1979-1987)