Investor Caution Quotes

Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock.

Remember that all financial markets are filled with good but not necessarily innocent people looking after their own self-interests before they look after yours.

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.

A pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street (a community in which quality control is not prized) will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.

Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

For every Tesla or Uber, there's a Valeant Pharmaceuticals or Theranos - two story stocks that seduced an astounding array of prominent investors and supporters based on stories that did turn out to be too good to be true.

… a pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons..

Every new industry has exuberance in advance of reality. The techies get carried away. There is a period of despair. Then the pendulum swings the other way, and people see the long term potential. It's like when the Internet bubble crashed.

The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices, ... This is the reason that history has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low risk premiums.

There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

Beware angel investors: they can be disruptive.

One of the ironies of the stock market is the emphasis on activity. Brokers, using terms such as 'marketability' and 'liquidity,' sing the praises of companies with high share turnover... but investors should understand that what is good for the croupier is not good for the customer. A hyperactive stock market is the pick pocket of enterprise.

When valuation confidence falls, it means that stock markets are perceived as overpriced.

Markets don't like instability, investors shy away from uncertainty, and consumer confidence goes down in difficult times.

Investors should be cautiously positioned as the global economy and markets face major uncertainties. The downgrade will be a further headwind to growth and job creation in the U.S.

While the interests of the business are served by the aphorism 'Don't just stand there. Do something!' the interests of investors are served by an approach that is its diametrical opposite: 'Don't do something. Just stand there!'

It seems superfluous to constrain trading in some of the newer derivatives and other innovative financial contracts of the past decade. The worst have failed; investors no longer fund them and are not likely to in the future.