Jeff Cooper Quotes

Bull-markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.

There is only one side of the market and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side.

I believe in the future, and to be a good investor, you have to believe in the future.

Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.

He who despairs over an event is a coward. He who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

We don't go into a market without a chance of a 40 percent share and sustainable differentiation. We wouldn't get into wiring oil rigs if we didn't believe we could get 40 percent.

I have no fear about the future for retail investors.

The problem with most people who play the market is that they are not flexible.

Wall Street is littered with the bones of those who knew just what to do, but could not bring themselves to do it.

If you buy all the stocks selling at or below two times earnings, you will lose money on half of them because instead of making profits they will actually lose money, but you will only lose a dollar or so a share at most. Then others will be mediocre performers. But the remaining big winners will go up and produce fabulous results and also ensure a good overall result.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

[John] Adams never had an optimistic view of human nature, and his experience in the Congress and abroad only deepened his suspicion that his fellow Americans might not have the character to sustain a republican government.

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.

Only a fool can believe people are basically good

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.

The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.

The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

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

I always have been optimistic about humanity's future. Always. Even at the most dismaying of times.

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.

Diversify your investments.

The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.

I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent.