Philip Roth Quotes

You don't want too much fear in a market, because people will be blinded to some very good buying opportunities. You don't want too much complacency because people will be blinded to some risk.

I love the competitive part of stocks. A lot of fear and greed, that's all it is. All I see is green and red.

While neurological studies have tried to identify components responsible for fear and greed, the impact on finance is less clear.

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know that it is hard for a market to keep going up when more and more people are getting out.

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

Near the top of the market, investors are extraordinarily optimistic because they've seen mostly higher prices for a year or two. The sell-offs witnessed during that span were usually brief. Even when they were severe, the market bounced back quickly and always rose to loftier levels. At the top, optimism is king, speculation is running wild, stocks carry high price/earnings ratios, and liquidity has evaporated. A small rise in interest rates can easily be the catalyst for triggering a bear market at that point.

The last leg of a bull market always ends in hysteria; the last leg of a bear market always ends in panic.

Cheer the bull, or cheer the bear; cheer both, and you will be trampled and eaten.

Be fearful when there is greed and be greedy when there is fear.

Be fearful when the markets get greedy, be greedy when the markets get fearful.

I buy when other people are selling.

We see that hyperactivity and reward areas are important when the bubble's rising. People getting caught up in it. We also see areas involving mentalizing, which means thinking about other people: Who's buying? Who's selling? Do they know something? We see emotional areas before the crash that indicate a sense of uncertainty or dread.

A crash really occurs when you suddenly have a violent downturn in the market that then heralds a long bull market.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

Markets rebounded quickly from morning jitters after the London Thursday terrorist bombing.

Secular cycles are the long periods - as long as decades - that come to define each market era. These cycles alternate between long-term bull and bear markets.

When the market goes to hell, it's more of an opportunity than a problem.

The trend of the market is up, not down. Shorting stocks puts you against that trend and thus makes it more difficult to make money.

If there's a recession, I'd buy stocks. That's when you make money: when markets are spooked.

Any bull market covers a multitude of sins, so there may be all sorts of problems with the current system that we won't see until the bear market comes.

The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.

If we're in a bubble, it's the weirdest bubble I've ever seen, where everybody hates everything.

When the man who ought to want a stock doesn't want it, why should I want it?

…in a crisis of confidence and credit, psychology is the big factor.

Markets tend to always overshoot when they get really ebullient.