Charles Dow Quotes

102 Charles Dow Quotes

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The great profits in stocks have almost invariably been made by people who saw the tendency of events clearly and who then bought a large amount of stock which they thought certain to get the results of great increase in prosperity.
Charles Dow

Great opportunities do not come every year…
Charles Dow

A scare of shorts after a considerable decline sometimes brings a very rapid rise…
Charles Dow

Customers who give stop [loss] orders should… understand exactly what they mean.
Charles Dow

Either cut losses short, or take an investment position.
Charles Dow

The buyer of any stock has some reason for his action. He has heard that the stock is going up; he believes that it is selling below its value, he sees that a bull market is under way and believes that this stock will go up as much as any other. These and similar reasons lead to buying.
Charles Dow

Points are good when they are good…
Charles Dow

Almost everybody learns by sad experience that the ‘best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.’
Charles Dow

Great operators change their minds about the expediency of market movements…
Charles Dow

It is one thing to will and another to do in stock speculation.
Charles Dow



The stop order is the friend of the active speculator, who wants to make a quick dash for a large profit and who is willing to make small losses in the hope of getting a good run once in four or five attempts.
Charles Dow

Stop orders should not be given in inactive stocks, as the seller may be slaughtered in their execution.
Charles Dow

Nobody can hope to buy at the bottom or to sell at the top…
Charles Dow

Profits and losses run in streaks.
Charles Dow

If people with either large or small capital would look upon trading in stocks as an attempt to get 12 percent per annum on their money instead of 50 percent weekly, they would come out a good deal better in the long run. Everybody knows this in its application to his private business, but the man who is prudent and careful in carrying on a store, a factory or a real estate business seems to think that totally different methods should be employed in dealing with stocks. Nothing is further from the truth.
Charles Dow

The more a man really knows about speculation, the less certain he becomes in regard to any market movement…
Charles Dow

If is possible to derive fairly accurate knowledge of the value of… a stock. It should be considered essentially with reference to its ability to maintain or increase its dividends.
Charles Dow

If the stock seems likely to continue a current rate of dividend, and the return on the cost is such as to make it fairly satisfactory as an investment, it is a good stock to buy when, in sympathy with decline in the general market, it has fallen below its normal price.
Charles Dow

The outsider who tries to follow the market from day to day, is not likely to have very marked success. The operator who selects investment properties carefully and buys after the market has had general declines, and who exercises a good deal of patience both in waiting for the time to buy and for the time to sell – who, in short, treats his speculation as an investment, will be likely to make money in stocks as a rule.
Charles Dow

Buy stocks for investment; that is, to pay for them outright when they are selling below value and wait until they are up to value, getting the difference for a profit.
Charles Dow



When a stock sells at a price which returns only about 3 ½ percent on the investment, it is obviously dear, except there be some reason for the established price.
Charles Dow

The tendency of prices over a considerable length of time will always be towards values.
Charles Dow

Most people however, when they talk about making money in stocks do not mean the slow road through investments, but the short cut by way of speculation.
Charles Dow

This rule… to cut losses short but let profits run. It sounds very easy to follow, but is in reality difficult to observe.
Charles Dow

If a man owns a seat on the Stock Exchange and pays no commissions, he can probably do best by operating for his own account on the floor of the exchange, although not every man with these facilities is able to make his profits exceed his losses.
Charles Dow

Most traders in or out of Wall Street are handicapped by the commission of $25 for buying and selling 100 shares of stock.
Charles Dow

The tendency with most people holding a stock which does not move for a time is to sell the stock about as soon as it begins to move, through fear that it will again become dull. This is just the time not to sell, but if anything, to buy more on the idea that other people have discovered that the price is below value.
Charles Dow

The outsider who will wisely study values and market conditions and then exercise patience enough for six men will be likely to make money in stocks.
Charles Dow

[In approximately 1896, published in 1920 after his death in 1902] The public as a whole does not like short selling.
Charles Dow

Squeezes of shorts sometimes develop themselves and are sometimes manipulated. When friends of a property see a large short interest they sometimes try to persuade holders of the stock to agree not to lend it for a day or two and thus scare shorts to cover by difficulty in borrowing.
Charles Dow



Mr [Jay] Gould is said to have once remained short of New York Central over four years, and to have had a large profit as between his buying and his selling price, but to have had the greater part of it eaten up in dividends.
Charles Dow

In picking out a stock to sell short, the first consideration ought to be that the price is above value, and that future value appears to be shrinking. It should be an active stock and, if possible a stock of large capital. It should be an old stock by preference, which means having wide distribution instead of concentrated ownership. By preference it should be a high priced stock with a reasonable probability that dividends will be reduced or passed.
Charles Dow

When people have been carrying various stocks, some good and some bad, and a time comes when they are obliged to suddenly furnish additional margin or reduce their commitments, they try to sell the stocks for which they think the market will be best, namely their best stocks.
Charles Dow

Good and bad [stocks] will decline measurably alike. But here comes in a market distinction. When the recovery comes, a day or a week later, the good stock will recover more and hold its recovery better than the poor stock.
Charles Dow

A stock intrinsically cheap and a stock intrinsically dear may be selling at the same price at a given time. As the result of six months’ trading they may have presented the appearance of moving together in most of the fluctuations, but at the end of the period the good stock will be 10 points higher than the poor one, the difference representing a little smaller decline and a little better rally in each of five or six swings.
Charles Dow

When there is a great change in the value of a stock it will advance in a bear period. The market as a whole declined from 1881 to 1885, but in that period Manhattan, while participating in most of the market swings, went from the neighborhood of 30 to the neighborhood of par, because the increased earnings of the company increased value steadily and largely during that time.
Charles Dow

The practical lesson is that a stock operator should not deal in stocks unless he thinks he knows their value…
Charles Dow

When the market appears in a doubtful position it is sometimes wise to sell short a stock that is conspicuously above its value and buy a stock which is conspicuously below its value, believe that one will protect the other until the position of the general market becomes clear.
Charles Dow

People in Wall Street, even those who get very near the center of large operations, do not know what the market is going to do with any regularity or certainty.
Charles Dow

The more they actually know, the less confident they become…
Charles Dow



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