Peter Lynch - Stocks Quotes

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

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

Peter Lynch
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.

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
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.

Peter Lynch
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.

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

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
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
There's no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating.

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

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
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
When management owns stock, then rewarding the shareholders becomes a first priority, whereas when management simply collects a paycheck, then increasing salaries becomes a first priority.

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

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

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

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
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
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