Gary Weiss Quotes

The last thing you want to do, unless it's a very unusual situation, is to invest money.

I'm making a case against how money managers are handling customers' money. The objective of the customer is not being met if the fund managers are diversifying their assets into hundreds of businesses. If they do this, they are typically performing close to the indexes. But that's not the way wealth is created.

I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on.

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.

What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

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.

I'm not someone who puts their money in a fund that earns 2 to 5 percent a year. I'm a man who tries to change things, move something with my money, to create jobs and, of course, at the same time earn more money with it.

Mutual funds were created to make investing easy, so consumers wouldn't have to be burdened with picking individual stocks.

I think it is crucial to diversify one's portfolio.

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).

The starting point of my career in money management in 1973-74 was the time of the only true bear market any living non-Japanese investor has seen in major markets. Equities, real estate, you name it, everyone got run over.

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

The thing to do with mutual funds is to buy a couple of decent ones, set up an investment plan and then never, ever think about them again, except maybe once a quarter or so when you take a peek at your statements to make sure that you have not accidentally been buying the Fidelity Peace-in-the-Middle-East fund.

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.

I don't invest in the stock market. I did it a long, long time ago when I was really young, and I got involved in all the investigations and all the prosecutions, and I felt it was better if I didn't make individual investments. So I'm invested in funds, but not in individual - not in individual stocks.

Well, actually, I manage a couple of stock portfolios or funds or whatever you want to call 'em, and I think I've done relatively well with them.

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.

When it comes to money, the best investments were probably the ones I did not make.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

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

I have no complaints about losing money I put in high-risk investments. I did some of that when I had real money; my informed choice, my measured gamble.

I really did believe that the most successful investments were the ones that you could own for the long run.

All I'm trying to do is manage money and take care of my shareholders.

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

People want to make sure there is flexibility to reallocate assets. They are trusting us to make the asset allocation decisions.