Investment Decision Making Quotes

If book knowledge made great investors, than the librarians would all be rich.

First of all I trust my own instinct, experience that I gained over years and feeling when the moment is right for buying shares. That is what one calls intuition.

Why would you want to invest with a guy whose thought process says, "If a second layer of fees is good, then let's add a third layer.

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements.

Always start at the end before you begin. Professional investors always have an exit strategy before they invest. Knowing your exit strategy is an important investment fundamental.

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon

Spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would choosing a refrigerator.

The mutual fund industry has been built, in a sense, on witchcraft.

There are no bad business and investment opportunities, but there are bad entrepreneurs and investors.

Twenty years in this business convinces me that any normal person using the customary three percent of the brain can pick stocks just as well, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert.

I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook.

There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don't know where the market is headed and those who don't know what they don't know. Then again, there is a third type of investor: the investment professional, who indeed knows he doesn't know, but whose livelihood depends upon appearing to know.

We next consider the rule that the investor does or should consider expected return a desirable thing and variance of return an undesirable thing.

The value of market esoterica to the consumer of investment advice is a different story. In my opinion, investment success will not be produced by arcane formulae, computer programs or signals flashed by the price behavior of stocks and markets. Rather an investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace.

If I owned any of these Hot New Issues that have doubled, tripled, quintupled or umptupled within days and in some cases hours after they were issued, I most certainly would grab my fabulous windfall, thank my lucky stars and invest the money. It's utter nonsense to think any newly issued stock is really worth two, ten or 20 times the [offering] price.... A management so stupid as to sell shares [cheap], and an underwriter so obtuse as not to discern the real value, together would provide reason enough for a sensible man to get rid of his shares.

If the investor is uneducated, anything he or she invests in will be risky. So it's not the investment that is risky. It's the investor.

Investigate carefully before you invest. Spend as much time researching the investment as you spend earning the money.

I think corporate managers should learn to be better investors because it would make them better managers.

If stocks are attractive and you don't buy, you don't just look like an idiot, you are an idiot.

There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.

Investment must be rational; if you can't understand it, don't do it.

Now is always the hardest time to invest.

In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.

Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.