Peter Lynch Quotes

Index investing outperforms active management year after year.

I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.

Wise investors won't try to outsmart the market.

99% of fund managers demonstrate no evidence of skill whatsoever.

The deeper one delves, the worse things look for actively managed funds.

A vast industry of stockbrokers, financial planners, and investment advisers skims a fortune for themselves off the top in exchange for passing their clients' money on to people who, as a whole, cannot possibly outperform the market.

Everybody has a different strategy, but everybody agrees that active management does not beat the market.

The debate can be put in the form of the question: Resolved, that the best of money managers cannot be demonstrated to be able to deliver the goods of superior portfolio-selection performance. Any jury that reviews the evidence, and there is a great deal of relevant evidence, must at least come out with the Scottish verdict: Superior investment performance is unproved.

The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.

The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers.

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.

I invest in things for the long term and have a long horizon and the flexibility.

My advice to the average investor in 1988 is to be patient and think long-term. It will take 18 months for confidence to get better and, in the meantime, this is absolutely no place for short-term money.

No one knows what the top-performing asset class will be next year. Lacking this prescience, your next-best solution is to own all of the classes and rebalance regularly.

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. You won't get there by reading 'Now is the time to buy.'

Mutual fund managers are trapped in this rather deadly vicious circle: the more successful they are, the more money flows into their mutual fund. Then, it is more difficult for them to beat the market averages or even to match their own past performance.

Successful hedge funds will be entrepreneurial; it is the essence of the craft.

It's easy to buy. Prove that you bought at the right time and the right price.

Investing is a business where you can look very silly for a long period of time before you are proven right.

Big fund companies have many ways to increase the returns of young funds that they want to promote. And at least one of those games involves popular offerings.

You, your employer and your plan's investment managers fail to follow even the most basic rules of investing. You overtrade, chase performance, do not think long term. All of you - All Of You - have done a horrible job managing your retirement plans.

Having the opportunity to follow the market frequently gives you the opportunity to see if you need to reevaluate your portfolio. But reevaluating your portfolio shouldn't trigger a sell signal so frequently.

Whether a tops-down or bottoms-up investor in bonds, stocks, or private equity, the standard analysis tends to judge an investor or his firm on the basis of how the bullish or bearish aspects of the cycle were managed.

I almost always recommend investors get fully invested, since it's better to put your money to work than to let it simply track the rate of inflation.

There's no statistical evidence that human beings have an ability to move in and out of the markets effectively. It's next to impossible.