Jean Chatzky Quotes

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.

Never, ever invest money that you will need prior to three to five years - minimum.

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.

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.

Money you won't need to use for at least seven years is money for investing. The goal here is to have your account grow over time to help you finance a distant goal, such as building a retirement fund. Since your goal is in the future, money for investing belongs in stocks.

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

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.

People with 401(k)s need to be very conservative. Picking bottoms should be for insiders and traders.

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

Stock market goes up or down, and you can't adjust your portfolio based on the whims of the market, so you have to have a strategy in a position and stay true to that strategy and not pay attention to noise that could surround any particular investment.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If you're saving for the long run, it's actually a good thing when the market is down because the more shares you have, the more you can potentially make when markets rise. And over time - decades, not months - the markets rise more than they fall.

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 have a million dollars in the stock market, because if I lose a million dollars, I don't personally care.

I'm a very passive investor.

People often panic when the markets go down and sell off their stocks - but then they aren't in the game when the markets are doing well.

I had a few stocks, but stocks took a dive. I never sell my stocks.

The key to making money is to stay invested.

One of our big challenges with the newsletter is that everyone thinks big stocks are safe. That's not true at all. They're only safe if the money is flowing there.

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