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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In business, competition is never as healthy as total domination.

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.

It isn't the head but the stomach that determines the fate of the stockpicker.

Never invest in a company without understanding its finances. The biggest losses in stocks come from companies with poor balance sheets.

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

You only need a few good stocks in your lifetime. I mean how many times do you need a stock to go up ten-fold to make a lot of money? Not a lot.

A lot of people got in at the wrong time. A lot of people did very well and some people said, "This is it. I'll never get back in again." And they maybe meant it, but they probably got back in again anyway.

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

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.

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

I'm always fully invested. It's a great feeling to be caught with your pants up.

When people discover they are no good at baseball or hockey, they put away their bats and their skates and they take up amateur golf or stamp collecting or gardening. But when people discover they are no good at picking stocks, they are likely to continue to do it anyway.

I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That's crystal ball stuff. That doesn't work.

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.

Twenty years in this business convinces me that any normal person using the customary three percent of the brain can pick stocks just as well, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert.

Imagine if you borrowed your parents' car without permission and ran it into a tree, how much better you'd feel if you were incorporated.

The stock market really isn't a gamble, as long as you pick good companies that you think will do well, and not just because of the stock price.

A price drop in a good stock is only a tragedy if you sell at that price and never buy more. To me, a price drop is an opportunity to load up on bargains from among your worst performers and your laggards that show promise. If you can't convince yourself 'When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a buyer' and banish forever the fatal thought 'When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a seller,' then you'll never make a decent profit in stocks.

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 can follow only one bit of data, follow the earnings - assuming the company in question has earnings. I subscribe to the crusty notion that sooner or later earnings make or break an investment in equities. What the stock price does today, tomorrow, or next week is only a distraction.

When you sell in desperation, you always sell cheap.

As I look back on it now, it's obvious that studying history and philosophy was much better preparation for the stock market than, say, studying statistics.

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.

Avoid hot stocks in hot industries.

Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what's actually happening to the companies in which you've invested

Most investors would be better off in an index fund.

When even the analysts are bored, it's time to start buying.

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.

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

Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it's doing.

The junior high schools and high schools of America have forgotten to teach one of the most important courses of all. Investing.

Spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would choosing a refrigerator.

An important key to investing is to remember that stocks are not lottery tickets.

Charts are great for predicting the past.

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.

There is always something to worry about. Avoid weekend thinking and ignoring the latest dire predictions of the newscasters. Sell a stock because the company's fundamentals deteriorate, not because the sky is falling.

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

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.

When you start to confuse Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae and Fannie Mae with members of your family, and you remember 2,000 stock symbols but forget the children's birthdays, there's a good chance you've become too wrapped up in your work.

I've always said, the key organ here isn't the brain, it's the stomach. When things start to decline - there are bad headlines in the papers and on television - will you have the stomach for the market volatility and the broad-based pessimism that tends to come with it?

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.

Never buy anything that you can't illustrate on the back of a napkin.

The best stock to buy is the one you already own.

A stock market decline is as routine as a January blizzard in Colorado. If you're prepared, it can't hurt you. A decline is a great opportunity to pick up the bargains left behind by investors who are fleeing the storm in panic.

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.

Investing is fun and exciting, but dangerous if you don't do any work.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, in business, so is a number.

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

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

You can't see the future through a rearview mirror

Invest in what you know.

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

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.

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

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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