Peter Lynch Quotes

Never give anyone the advice to buy or sell shares, because the most benevolent price of advice can turn out badly.

If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn't be in stocks.

As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.

Stock prices relative to company assets are no better at signaling the likelihood of future earnings growth than they were the day the Titanic sank, and risk management is a good deal worse.

I knew a guy who had $5 million and owned his house free and clear. But he wanted to make a bit more money to support his spending, so at the peak of the internet bubble he was selling puts on internet stocks. He lost all of his money and his house and now works in a restaurant. It's not a smart thing for the country to legalize gambling [in the stock market] and make it very accessible.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

I had some airline stock, but the airlines tanked. I didn't have a lot of money in them, though.

The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.

I could never gamble on stocks and shares because I saw my father get hurt that way - he lost quite a lot of money when the stock market collapsed in 2001.

Don't bottom fish.

I caught hold of the great bull market in soybeans in 1977. I had no idea what I was doing, incidentally.

As a professional, you can afford to pick some stocks and be wrong about a few of them. To keep your job, you cannot take the risk of being seen to be wrong about the 'big picture' for very long.

The stock market to me was like a video game. When it went off, it was like turning the game off. It wasn't something I'd think about until I'd turn the machine on again.

Anybody who plays the stock market not as an insider is like a man buying cows in the moonlight.

People always come up to me and ask what the next 'big short' will be. The truth is I simply do not have an answer, and do not want to have an answer, to this question.

I'm not short, so I can make a speech and drive the stock down and cover the stock. That's not what I do.

My advice to most people is don't short stocks. It's a very, very difficult business. And you can really get clobbered.

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

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.

I got an E-Trade account. Turns out I can turn $1,000 into $420 in less than a week. Sure, I had to pay some fees.

There is general agreement among researchers that nearly all stock pickers, whether they know it or not-and few of them do-are playing a game of chance.

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

It's 1450 out of 1500 ETF funds that I just wouldn't touch because they're not diversified enough. Or they have some huge speculative twist to them that if you can guess the markets right you will do very well for a day or two but who can do that? Nobody.

You have to keep your priorities straight if you plan to do well in stocks.