Steve Eisman Quotes

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

Like everybody, I have invested in things that have gone bad, because there's never any guarantee of success or profit when it comes to money.

Because of my own experience with market fluctuation, I recognize the great risks one takes on investments. This converts the Social Security safety net into a risky proposition many cannot afford to take.

In the investment business, you must expect to be wrong.

I haven't changed any of my investments since I've been in the Senate and haven't purchased any stocks since I've been in the Senate.

Well, there's always risk in long-term investment.

Regardless of what happens in the markets, stick to your investment program. Changing your strategy at the wrong time can be the single most devastating mistake you can make as an investor.

Where you really get in trouble is if the market is dropping and the economy's slowing down and you don't take action.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.

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).

Always keep your portfolio and your risk at your own individual comfortable sleeping point.

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.

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

There's a tendency to look at investments in isolation. Investors focus on the risk of individual securities.

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.

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.

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.

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 don't pretend that I can predict the future value of the growth rate or rate of return.

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.

I create offbeat advice; I don't follow it. I rarely take third-party advice on my investments.

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.