Richard Thaler Quotes

If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.

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.

Equities will do well over time - you just have to avoid getting excited when other people are getting excited.

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

Buy into good, well-researched companies and then wait. Let's call it a sit-on-your-hands investment strategy.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient.

Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.

I think there's something to be said for developing the disposition to own stocks without fretting.

The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.

Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That's not just a catchy slogan. It's the very essence of successful investing.

Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume.

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).

We're getting hurt, but I'm a long-term investor.

If owning stocks is a long-term project for you, following their changes constantly is a very, very bad idea. It's the worst possible thing you can do, because people are so sensitive to short-term losses. If you count your money every day, you'll be miserable.

Owning equities is an essential part of anyone's portfolio. You just can't ignore it over time. It's going to add the real pop to anyone's overall performance.

But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.

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.

Do not buy the hype from Wall St. and the press that stocks always go up. There are long periods when stocks do nothing and other investments are better.

All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions.

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

If you can predict where the market's going, just do what you can predict. If you can't, which is the presumption of dollar cost averaging or time cost averaging, either one, then you're trying to ease in. But if the market rises more than it falls most of the time, easing in is, by definition, a loser's game.

One thing on psychology, which we've always known, is that every investor says they're long-term - and they are until the market takes a hit.

Here is a dirty little secret: Stock-picking is wildly overrated. Sure, it makes for great cocktail party chatter, and what is more fun than delving into a company's new products? But the truth is that individual stocks are riskier than broad indices.

Whenever you hear a discussion about the short-term swings in any given stock's price, your immediate thought should be whether it matters to why you are investing.