John C. Bogle Quotes

Reversion to the mean is the iron rule of the financial markets.

Nothing ever surprises me about the market.

The stock market is like a small row boat on a rough sea, bouncing around as it drifts, whereas the macro economy is like a large ocean liner, very ponderous and difficult to maneuver but without such a rough journey.

Investors tend to discover 'hot' mutual fund managers just after a successful run and just before the inescapable force of mean reversion is about to kick in.

When the weather changes, nobody believes the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed.

I really believe that you cannot use the stock market as a proxy for the economy.

I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected.

Some kind of correction will always happen. But it depends on the specific companies.

The Wall Street Dow Jones up and down thing that's moving when the stock market's open? That thing freaks me out. It's up, it's down, it's just maddening to me. I guess I'm such a super-focused kind of person that I get distracted really easy. I'll watch that thing, and it's like I'm losing money, I'm getting money. It's just crazy.

The idea that commodities, as an asset class, is finished is just fundamentally flawed.

The good news is, the stock market is closed and it can't hurt us again until tomorrow.

If it is hard to imagine that 20% of losses on the stock market, you should never participate

If you don't follow the stock market, you are missing some amazing drama.

There is a lot of pain still to be had in the equity markets, particularly aimed at the risky end of the spectrum. We think the fair value on the market is about a third lower in the U.S. . .

Thanks, Mr. President. Nobody has complimented the stock exchange for a long while.

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions …

I don’t know why the Stock Market does what it does.

There is no 20-year period in American history when stocks lost money.

Markets shouldn't be moving in a straight line.

Anyone who says he is an expert in the market is lying to you. There is no such thing.

Markets are unforgiving, and sometimes they move for reasons we can't possibly foresee.

When valuation confidence falls, it means that stock markets are perceived as overpriced.

As I have said before, the daily machinations of the stock market are like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Unfortunately, slow and steady in any financial market is actually impossible.