Quotes & Sayings About Buying Stocks

You'll get nowhere buying stocks just because they have a great story. — James O'Shaughnessy

No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily - or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play. — Edwin Lefevre

It is crucial to have a strategy in place before problems hit, precisely because no one can accurately predict the future direction of the stock market or economy. Value investing, the strategy of buying stocks at an appreciable discount from the value of the underlying businesses, is one strategy that provides a road map to successfully navigate not only through good times but also through turmoil. — Seth Klarman

The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway ... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market. — Warren Buffett

If you know how to value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into #30 or #35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness. — Warren Buffett

When there is some fear about accounting and growth and the economy, food stocks are a decent place to be, ... This company has been through a bit of a restructuring the last couple of years. Management is doing a great job. The company is improving and people are buying chocolate. So, what a great week to buy it. — Liz Miller

A lot of what I do is running businesses rather than buying stocks. My worst decision is probably when I know I have the wrong chief executive running the business, and I keep on waiting to make the difficult decision of replacing him. — Gerry Schwartz

Speculation in oil stock companies was another great evil ... From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil ... Such fluctuations were the natural element of the speculator, and he came early, buying in quantities and holding in storage tanks for higher prices. If enough oil was held, or if the production fell off, up went the price, only to be knocked down by the throwing of great quantities of stocks on the market. — Ida Tarbell

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

Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down. — Warren Buffett

The recent trading environment has felt something like walking into a place and having a sense that something is wrong and dangerous but not knowing exactly what will happen or when. "QE Infinity" has so distorted the prices of stocks and bonds that nobody can possibly determine what the investing landscape would look like, or what the condition of the economy and financial system would be, in the absence of Fed bond-buying. — Paul Singer

I want attractive stocks that will benefit from persistent institutional buying pressure. — Louis Navellier

The investor is neither smart not richer when he buys in an advancing market and the market continues to rise. That is true even when he cashes in a goodly profit, unless either (a) he is definitely through with buying stocks an unlikely story or (b) he is determined to reinvest only at considerably lower levels. In a continuous program no market profit is fully realized until the later reinvestment has actually taken place, and the true measure of the trading profit is the difference between the previous selling level and the new buying level. — Benjamin Graham

Numerous academic studies have shown that amateur investors make poor traders - buying stocks for the wrong reasons, holding losers for too long, and acting on whims and emotions. — Gary Weiss

Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.' Easier said than done for the vast majority of stock traders ... On every stock trade there is someone who wants to sell and someone who wants to buy, at least at a particular price ... the person who is selling thinks that she is getting out just in time while the person buying thinks that he is about to make good money.
... The truth is that the market doesn't really reflect some magical perfect valuation of a stock under the efficient market hypothesis. It reflects the mass consensus of how actual individual investors value the stock. It is the sum total of everyone's hopes and fears ... — M.E. Thomas

When I'm bearish and I sell a stock, each sale must be at a lower level than the previous sale. When I am buying, the reverse is true. I must buy on a rising scale. I don't buy long stocks on a scale down, I buy on a scale up. — Jesse Lauriston Livermore

Buying and selling securities in an attempt to outperform the market will effectively be a game of chance rather than skill. — Kenneth Eade

I buy stocks when they are battered. I am strict with my discipline. I always buy stocks with low price-earnings ratios, low price-to-book value ratios and higher-than-average yield. Academic studies have shown that a strategy of buying out-of-favor stocks with low P/E, price-to-book and price-to-cash flow ratios outperforms the market pretty consistently over long periods of time. — David Dreman

I was working in financing. I was buying and selling stocks for a market-maker on the options floor at the Pacific Stock Exchange. He took me under his wing and was training me to take over his accounts. That's the career I had embarked on, at the time. — Tim Kang

1. Investors give fund managers money at the wrong time. Now that you've had some time to read this book and understand the importance of buying stocks during fear cycles and holding during greed cycles, this first indicator should make sense. To understand this principle, imagine that you're the fund manager of a $100 billion investment fund. When the stock market crashes and you're able to purchase severely undervalued businesses with minimal debt, not only do you lack funds to invest, but all your resources are being depleted by scared investors. Instead of receiving money to buy the great deals, your investors are selling their shares in the fund and you don't have the capacity to take advantage of the market behavior. This reason alone severely handicaps fund managers as they attempt to beat the market. — Preston G. Pysh

The people who are buying stocks because they're going up and they don't know what they do deserve to lose money. — Jim Cramer

The superior performance of the original S&P 500 firms surprises most investors. But value investors (as described in Chapter 12) know that growth stocks often are priced too high, and excitement over their prospects often induces investors to pay too high a price. Profitable firms that do not catch investors' eyes are often underpriced. If investors reinvest the dividends of such firms, they are buying undervalued shares that will add significantly to their return. — Jeremy Siegel

Individual investors have become far more powerful than anyone gives them credit for. Today, 85 million Americans invest in stocks. Collectively, that kind of buying and selling power can move markets. — Maria Bartiromo

Well, there are lot of people who make a lot of money off the fifth- and sixth-life crises. All of a sudden they have a ton of consumers scared out of their minds and willing to buy facial cream, designer jeans, SAT test prep courses, condoms, cars, scooters, self-help books, watches, wallets, stocks, whatever ... all the crap that the twenty-somethings used to buy, they now have the ten-somethings buying. They doubled their market! — Ned Vizzini

Cash - in savings accounts, short-term CDs or money market deposits - is great for an emergency fund. But to fulfill a long-term investment goal like funding your retirement, consider buying stocks. The more distant your financial target, the longer inflation will gnaw at the purchasing power of your money. — Suze Orman