Best 112 quotes of Peter Lynch on MyQuotes

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.

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

All the time and effort people devote to picking the right fund, the hot hand, the great manager have, in most cases, led to no advantage.

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.

A lot of people got in at the wrong time. A lot of people did very well and some people said, "This is it. I'll never get back in again." And they maybe meant it, but they probably got back in again anyway.

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

An important key to investing is to remember that stocks are not lottery tickets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Charts are great for predicting the past.

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.

Equity mutual funds are the perfect solution for people who want to own stocks without doing their own research.

Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.

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

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

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.

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

I don't know anyone who said on their deathbed: 'Gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'

If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it wouldn't be a bad thing.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, in business, so is a number.

If you can find a company that can get away with raising prices year after year without losing customers (an addictive product such as cigarettes fills the bill), you've got a terrific investment.

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.

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

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.

If you have the stomach for stocks, but neither the time nor the inclination to do the homework, invest in equity mutual funds.

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.

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.

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.

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

I like to buy a company any fool can manage because eventually one will.

Imagine if you borrowed your parents' car without permission and ran it into a tree, how much better you'd feel if you were incorporated.

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

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

In business, competition is never as healthy as total domination.

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.

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

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.

In the long run, it's not just how much money you make that will determine your future prosperity. It's how much of that money you put to work by saving it and investing it.

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.

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.

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

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

I spend about fifteen minutes a year on economic analysis.

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.

I think you have to learn that there's a company behind every stock, and that there's only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.

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