Top 120 Peter Lynch Quotes (2023 Update)
Page 3 of 3

101. “All the time and effort people devote to picking the right fund, the hot hand, the great manager have, in most cases, led to no advantage.”

— Peter Lynch

102. “This is one of the keys to successful investing: focus on the companies, not on the stocks.”

— Peter Lynch

103. “In the summer of 1990, I was buying stocks and I was probably three or four months early there. But we had a great rally in 1991.”

— Peter Lynch

104. “Improved turnout will give parliament and government the appearance of being more legitimate.”

— Peter Lynch

105. “People who succeed in the stock market also accept periodic losses, setbacks, and unexpected occurrences. Calamitous drops do not scare them out of the game.”

— Peter Lynch

106. “Big companies have small moves, small companies have big moves.”

— Peter Lynch

107. “It takes remarkable patience to hold on to a stock in a company that excites you, but which everybody else seems to ignore. You begin to think everybody else is right and you are wrong. But where the fundamentals are promising, patience is often rewarded – Lukens stock went up sixfold in the fifteenth year, American Greetings was a sixbagger in six years, Angelica a sevenbagger in four, Brunswick a sixbagger in five, and SmithKline a threebagger in two.”

— Peter Lynch

108. “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.”

— Peter Lynch

109. “Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.”

— Peter Lynch

110. “It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.”

— Peter Lynch

111. “Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach. If you are susceptible to selling everything in a panic, you ought to avoid stocks and mutual funds altogether.”

— Peter Lynch

112. “The most important organ in the body as far as the stock market is concerned is the guts, not the head. Anyone can acquire the know-how for analyzing stocks.”

— Peter Lynch

113. “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.”

— Peter Lynch

114. “It only takes a handful of big winners to make a lifetime of investing worthwhile.”

— Peter Lynch

115. “So while I was in college I did a little study on the freight industry, the air freight industry. And I looked at this company called Flying Tiger. And I actually put a thousand dollars in it and I remember I thought this air cargo was going to be a thing of the future.”

— Peter Lynch

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

— Peter Lynch

117. “A technique that works repeatedly is to wait until the prevailing opinion about a certain industry is that things have gone from bad to worse, and then buy shares in the strongest companies in the group.”

— Peter Lynch

118. “I’ve always been a great lover of baseball.”

— Peter Lynch

119. “When looking at the same sky, people in mature industries see clouds where people in immature industries see pie.”

— Peter Lynch

120. “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.”

— Peter Lynch

121. “Whenever you invest in any company, you’re looking for its market cap to rise. This can’t happen unless buyers are paying higher prices for the shares, making your investment more valuable.”

— Peter Lynch

122. “While catching up on the news is merely depressing to the citizen who has no stocks, it is a dangerous habit for the investor.”

— Peter Lynch

123. “Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards. For some reason the whole business.”

— Peter Lynch

124. “Stocks you trade, it’s wives you’re stuck with.”

— Peter Lynch

125. “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.”

— Peter Lynch

126. “The secret of his success is that he never went to business school. Imagina all the lessons he never had to unlearn.”

— Peter Lynch

127. “The old Wall Street adage “never invest in anything that eats or needs repairs” may apply to racehorses, but it’s malarkey when it comes to houses.”

— Peter Lynch

128. “Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of ’em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that’s the promise to some people.”

— Peter Lynch

129. “I’m always on the lookout for great companies in lousy industries. A great industry that’s growing fast, such as computers or medical technology, attracts too much attention and too many competitors.”

— Peter Lynch

130. “If my favorite Internet company sells for $30 a share, and yours sells for $10, then people who focus on price would say that mine is the superior company. This is a dangerous delusion. What Mr. Market pays for a stock today or next week doesn’t tell you which company has the best chance to succeed two to three years down the information superhighway.”

— Peter Lynch

131. “A person who owns property and has a stake in the enterprise is likely to work harder and feel happier and do a better job than a person who doesn.”

— Peter Lynch

132. “Primes are the atoms of the number system: every whole number is a product of primes.”

— Peter Lynch

133. “In stage four, once again they’re crowded around me – but this time it’s to tell me what stocks I should buy. Even the dentist has three or four tips, and in the next few days I look up his recommendations in the newspaper and they’ve all gone up. When the neighbors tell me what to buy and then I wish I had taken their advice, it’s a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble.”

— Peter Lynch