Jeremy Grantham Quotes

You cannot have an asset that goes up in price 1% every month or 1% every six months or every day without people starting to start thinking it'll do the same tomorrow, so that's why these bubbles form.

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.

We see that hyperactivity and reward areas are important when the bubble's rising. People getting caught up in it. We also see areas involving mentalizing, which means thinking about other people: Who's buying? Who's selling? Do they know something? We see emotional areas before the crash that indicate a sense of uncertainty or dread.

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Financial markets have a tendency to go to excess.

Facebook stock continues to plummet. People started selling once they found out their mom bought it too.

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

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 …

When the man who ought to want a stock doesn't want it, why should I want it?

Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.

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

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

We never know what the Street is going to do with the funky trading.

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.

Creating a Financial Transactions Tax would go a long way to curbing short-term speculative trading, including high-frequency trading.

There's something on Wall Street called PIG - panic, ignorance, and greed. Those are the big sins. I'm not greedy, I knew I was ignorant, and I didn't panic.

Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.

But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.

I believe the only things that really matter in investing are the bubbles and the busts

The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.

Television series are like the stock market. There's room for bears and bulls but no room for pigs.

Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own.