Peter Lynch quotes share extensive knowledge on stock trading, when to buy, what to buy and a number of other ideas. He has made millions of dollars through various investments. He shares a wealth of information just like Warren Buffet and Carlos Slim who are both investors.
Peter Lynch is an American philanthropist, investor, and mutual fund manager who is a multi-millionaire. Jeff Bezos mentioned him in a book that talks about investing in companies and ignoring the short time frame outlook. Lynch has a wealth of knowledge as an investor that many who are richer than he is, appreciate. Below are a number of his quotes.
Quote #1 “The trick is not to learn to trust your gut feelings, but rather to discipline yourself to ignore them. Stand by your stocks as long as the fundamental story of the company hasn’t changed.” |
Quote #2 “Whenever you invest in any company, you’re looking for its market cap to rise. This can’t happen unless buyers are paying higher prices for the shares, making your investment more valuable.” |
Quote #3 “People who succeed in the stock market also accept periodic losses, setbacks, and unexpected occurrences. Calamitous drops do not scare them out of the game.” |
Quote #4 “Know what you own, and know why you own it.” |
Quote #5 “Big companies have small moves, small companies have big moves.” |
Quote #6 “Moderately fast growers (20 to 25 percent) in nongrowth industries are ideal investments. • Look for companies with niches. • When purchasing depressed stocks in troubled companies, seek out the ones with the superior financial positions and avoid the ones with loads of bank debt. • Companies that have no debt can’t go bankrupt. • Managerial ability may be important, but it’s quite difficult to assess. Base your purchases on the company’s prospects, not on the president’s resume or speaking ability. • A lot of money can be made when a troubled company turns around. • Carefully consider the price-earnings ratio. If the stock is grossly overpriced, even if everything else goes right, you won’t make any money. • Find a story line to follow as a way of monitoring a company’s progress. • Look for companies that consistently buy back their own shares.” |
Quote #7 “Peter Lynch doesn’t advise you to buy stock in your favorite store just because you like shopping in the store, nor should you buy stock in a manufacturer because it makes your favorite product or a restaurant because you like the food. Liking a store, a product, or a restaurant is a good reason to get interested in a company and put it on your research list, but it’s not enough of a reason to own the stock! Never invest in any company before you’ve done the homework on the company’s earnings prospects, financial condition, competitive position, plans for expansion, and so forth.” |
Quote #8 “Remember, things are never clear until it’s too late.” |
Quote #9 “When you sell in desperation, you always sell cheap.” |
Quote #10 “The old Wall Street adage "never invest in anything that eats or needs repairs" may apply to racehorses, but it's malarkey when it comes to houses.” |
Quote #11 “It takes remarkable patience to hold on to a stock in a company that excites you, but which everybody else seems to ignore. You begin to think everybody else is right and you are wrong. But where the fundamentals are promising, patience is often rewarded—Lukens stock went up sixfold in the fifteenth year, American Greetings was a sixbagger in six years, Angelica a sevenbagger in four, Brunswick a sixbagger in five, and SmithKline a threebagger in two.” |
Quote #12 “If you can follow only one bit of data, follow the earnings—assuming the company in question has earnings. As you’ll see in this text, 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.” |
Quote #13 “Here are some pointers from this section: • Understand the nature of the companies you own and the specific reasons for holding the stock. (“It is really going up!” doesn’t count.) • By putting your stocks into categories you’ll have a better idea of what to expect from them.” |
Quote #14 “Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later any idiot probably is going to be running it.” |
Quote #15 “The typical big winner in the Lynch portfolio (I continue to pick my share of losers, too!) generally takes three to ten years or more to play out.” |
Quote #16 “The more cash that builds up in the treasury, the greater the pressure to piss it away.” |
Quote #17 “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 by just sitting there, instead of checking the horse.” |
Quote #18 “The secret of his success is that he never went to business school. Imagina all the lessons he never had to unlearn.” |
Quote #19 “Understand the nature of the companies you own and the specific reasons for holding the stock. (“It is really going up!” doesn’t count.) |
Quote #20 “A person who owns property and has a stake in the enterprise is likely to work harder and feel happier and do a better job than a person who doesn't.” |
Quote #21 “stick with a steady and consistent performer” |
Quote #22 “The stock is selling at a p/e of 30, while the most optimistic projections of earnings growth are 15–20 percent for the next two years.” |
Quote #23 “Primes are the atoms of the number system: every whole number is a product of primes.” |
Quote #24 “This is one of the keys to successful investing: focus on the companies, not on the stocks.” |
Quote #25 “Invest in What You Know.” |
Quote #26 “There are five basic ways a company can increase earnings*: reduce costs; raise prices; expand into new markets; sell more of its product in the old markets; or revitalize, close, or otherwise dispose of a losing operation.” |
Quote #27 “When looking at the same sky, people in mature industries see clouds where people in immature industries see pie.” |
Quote #28 “If my favorite Internet company sells for $30 a share, and yours sells for $10, then people who focus on price would say that mine is the superior company. This is a dangerous delusion. What Mr. Market pays for a stock today or next week doesn’t tell you which company has the best chance to succeed two to three years down the information superhighway.” |
Quote #29 “If the p/e of Coca-Cola is 15, you’d expect the company to be growing at about 15 percent a year, etc. But if the p/e ratio is less than the growth rate, you may have found yourself a bargain. A company, say, with a growth rate of 12 percent a year (also known as a “12-percent grower”) and a p/e ratio of 6 is a very attractive prospect.” |
Quote #30 “Find something you enjoy doing and give it everything you've got, and the money will take care of itself.” |
Quote #31 “and magazines and listen to the same economists.” |
Quote #32 “By putting your stocks into categories you’ll have a better idea of what to expect from them.” |
Quote #33 “Consider the size of a company if you expect it to profit from a specific product.” |
Quote #34 “Look for small companies that are already profitable and have proven that their concept can be replicated. • Be suspicious of companies with growth rates of 50 to 100 percent a year.” |
Quote #35 “Avoid hot stocks in hot industries. • Distrust diversifications, which usually turn out to be diworseifications. • Long shots almost never pay off. • It’s better to miss the first move in a stock and wait to see if a company’s plans are working out. • People get incredibly valuable fundamental information from their jobs that may not reach the professionals for months or even years. • Separate all stock tips from the tipper, even if the tipper is very smart, very rich, and his or her last tip went up. • Some stock tips, especially from an expert in the field, may turn out to be quite valuable. However, people in the paper industry normally give out tips on drug stocks, and people in the health care field never run out of tips on the coming takeovers in the paper industry. • Invest in simple companies that appear dull, mundane, out of favor, and haven’t caught the fancy of Wall Street.” |
Quote #36 “the stock market demands conviction as surely as it victimizes the unconvinced.” |
Quote #37 “The lesson here is: don’t spend a lot of time poring over the past performance charts. That’s not to say you shouldn’t pick a fund with a good long-term record. But it’s better to stick with a steady and consistent performer than to move in and out of funds, trying to catch the waves." |
Quote #38 “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.” |
Quote #39 “The p/e ratio can be thought of as the number of years it will take the company to earn back the amount of your initial investment—assuming, of course, that the company’s earnings stay constant.” |
Quote #40 “But in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the United States was an emerging nation, prices held steady, even though the banks had begun printing money like crazy.” |
Quote #41 “Most individual investors would be better off in an index mutual fund.” |
Quote #42 “there was no longer an economic benefit in forcing people into a life of servitude.” |
Quote #43 “Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards.” |
Quote #44 “The combination of new equipment and new chemicals turned the American farm into the most efficient food bank on earth, capable of producing more wheat, corn, and so forth, per acre than any other country's farms in the history of agriculture.” |
Quote #45 “more than eight hundred thousand Americans file for personal bankruptcy every year.” |
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Peter Lynch quotes are definitely worthy of reading if you want to be an investor in stocks and all that comes along with such a portfolio. I hope that the quotes you have read here will be a great source of information and motivation to succeed.