Top 138 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Lynch - Page 3

Never invest in anything that cannot be illustrated with a crayon

I like to buy a company any fool can manage because eventually one will.

Gentlemen who prefer bonds don't know what they're missing.

The worst thing you can do is invest in companies you know nothing about. Unfortunately, buying stocks on ignorance is still a popular American pastime.

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.

Never buy anything that you can't illustrate on the back of a napkin.

There's a company behind every stock and a reason companies - and their stocks - perform the way they do.

That's not to say there's no such thing as an overvalued market, but there's no point worrying about it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, in business, so is a number.

Avoid hot stocks in hot industries.

A lot of people got in at the wrong time. A lot of people did very well and some people said, "This is it. I'll never get back in again." And they maybe meant it, but they probably got back in again anyway.

When you start to confuse Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae and Fannie Mae with members of your family, and you remember 2,000 stock symbols but forget the children's birthdays, there's a good chance you've become too wrapped up in your work.

The natural-born investor is a myth.

When even the analysts are bored, it's time to start buying.

Imagine if you borrowed your parents' car without permission and ran it into a tree, how much better you'd feel if you were incorporated.

You can find good reasons to scuttle your equities in every morning paper and on every broadcast of the nightly news.

You just don't know when you can find the bottom.

When people discover they are no good at baseball or hockey, they put away their bats and their skates and they take up amateur golf or stamp collecting or gardening. But when people discover they are no good at picking stocks, they are likely to continue to do it anyway.