Peter Lynch Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

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

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
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
It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.

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
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.

Peter Lynch
All you need for a lifetime of successful investing is a few big winners, and the pluses from those will overwhelm the minuses from the stocks that don't work out.

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

Peter Lynch
There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.

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

Peter Lynch
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.

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

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

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

Peter Lynch
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.

Peter Lynch
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.

Peter Lynch
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.

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
If you can't find any companies that you think are attractive, put your money in the bank until you discover some.

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
Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.

Peter Lynch