Peter Lynch Quotes & Sayings

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. — Peter Lynch

I've always been a great lover of baseball. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

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

First, you find the "market capitalization" ("market cap" for short) by multiplying the number of shares outstanding (let's say 100 million) by the current stock price (let's say $100 a share). One hundred million times $100 equals $10 billion. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

Invest in what you know. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

In business, competition is never as healthy as total domination. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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 best stock to buy is the one you already own. — Peter Lynch

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

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 — Peter Lynch

Most investors would be better off in an index fund. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

Long shots almost always miss the mark. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

Don't bottom fish. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

The natural-born investor is a myth. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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? — Peter Lynch

You can't see the future through a rearview mirror — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

The simpler it is, the better I like it. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

Charts are great for predicting the past. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

Hold no more stocks than you can remain informed on. — Peter Lynch

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

Debt is saving in reverse. The more it builds up, the worse off you are. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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

In other words, I continue to think like an amateur as frequently as possible. GOING IT ALONE — Peter Lynch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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. — Peter Lynch

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

I spend about fifteen minutes a year on economic analysis. — Peter Lynch