John Templeton Quotes

195 John Templeton Quotes

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If you search worldwide, you will find more bargains—and possibly better bargains—than in any single nation.
John Templeton

Do your homework.
John Templeton

People will tell you: Investigate before you invest. Listen to them. Study companies to learn what makes them successful.
John Templeton

If you expect a company to grow and prosper, you are buying future earnings. You expect that earnings will go up, and because most stocks are valued on future earnings, you can expect the stock price may rise also.
John Templeton

If you expect a company to be acquired or dissolved at a premium over its market price, you may be buying assets. Years ago Forbes regularly published lists of these so-called “loaded laggards.” But remember, there are far fewer of these companies today. Raiders have swept through the marketplace over the past 10 to 15 years: Be very suspicious of what they left behind.
John Templeton

Expect and react to change. No bull market is permanent. No bear market is permanent. And there are no stocks that you can buy and forget. The pace of change is too great.
John Templeton

From 1978 through 1990, one of every three issues changed—because the company was in decline, or was acquired, or went private, or went bankrupt.
John Templeton

Remember, no investment is forever.
John Templeton

Don’t panic. The time to sell is before the crash, not after.
John Templeton

The only reason to sell them [a stock] now is to buy other, more attractive stocks. If you can’t find more attractive stocks, hold on to what you have.
John Templeton



Learn from your mistakes.
John Templeton

The only way to avoid mistakes is not to invest—which is the biggest mistake of all.
John Templeton

Forgive yourself for your errors. Don’t become discouraged, and certainly don’t try to recoup your losses by taking bigger risks. Instead, turn each mistake into a learning experience. Determine exactly what went wrong and how you can avoid the same mistake in the future.
John Templeton

The investor who says, “This time is different,” when in fact it’s virtually a repeat of an earlier situation, has uttered among the four most costly words in the annals of investing.
John Templeton

The big difference between those who are successful and those who are not is that successful people learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others.
John Templeton

If you begin with a prayer, you can think more clearly and make fewer mistakes.
John Templeton

Outperforming the market is a difficult task.
John Templeton

The challenge is not simply making better investment decisions than the average investor. The real challenge is making investment decisions that are better than those of the professionals who manage the big institutions.
John Templeton

Success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions.
John Templeton

Any investment company that consistently outperforms the market is actually doing a much better job than you might think. And if it not only consistently outperforms the market, but does so by a significant degree, it is doing a superb job.
John Templeton



An investor who has all the answers doesn’t even understand all the questions.
John Templeton

A cocksure approach to investing will lead, probably sooner than later, to disappointment if not outright disaster.
John Templeton

The wise investor recognizes that success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions.
John Templeton

Even if we can identify an unchanging handful of investing principles, we cannot apply these rules to an unchanging universe of investments—or an unchanging economic and political environment. Everything is in a constant state of change…
John Templeton

There’s no free lunch.
John Templeton

Never invest on sentiment. The company that gave you your first job, or built the first car you ever owned, or sponsored a favorite television show of long ago may be a fine company. But that doesn’t mean its stock is a fine investment. Even if the corporation is truly excellent, prices of its shares may be too high.
John Templeton

Never invest in an initial public offering (IPO) to “save” the commission. That commission is built into the price of the stock—a reason why most new stocks decline in value after the offering.
John Templeton

Never invest solely on a tip. Why, that’s obvious, you might say. It is. But you would be surprised how many investors, people who are well-educated and successful, do exactly this.
John Templeton

Unfortunately, there is something psychologically compelling about a tip. Its very nature suggests inside information, a way to turn a fast profit.
John Templeton

Do not be fearful or negative too often. For 100 years optimists have carried the day in U.S. stocks. Even in the dark ’70s, many professional money managers—and many individual investors too—made money in stocks, especially those of smaller companies.
John Templeton



There will, of course, be corrections, perhaps even crashes. But, over time, our studies indicate stocks do go up…and up… and up.
John Templeton

The basic rules of building wealth by investing in stocks will hold true. In this century or the next it’s still “Buy low, sell high.”
John Templeton

Unfortunately, too often people focus on the negatives and lose sight of the multitude of blessings that surround us and the limitless potential that exists for the future.
John Templeton

Of course we paid all cash. We had been always scrupulous never to borrow. We paid all cash for autos and houses and everything else, so we would always be receivers and not payers of interest.
John Templeton

To make thrift a joy rather than a burden, we made a game of it by telling our plan to all friends and relatives, who then gave us ideas. We found a furnished Manhattan apartment with a view of the East River for fifty dollars monthly. Our friends helped us find “blue plate” dinners in restaurants for fifty cents. In 1950, the only Manhattan apartment we could find for fifty dollars was on the sixth floor of a no-elevator building on East 88th Street. To furnish five rooms, we could budget only twenty-five dollars. Our friends watched newspapers for furniture auctions when people were moving away. At such auctions if anyone bid one dollar for a chair we said nothing, but if no one bid we said ten cents. Our costliest purchase was five dollars for a two hundred-dollar sofa bed, which was so good we used it for twenty-five years. With such joyous games we furnished five rooms with mismatched furniture and carpets for twenty-five dollars.
John Templeton

The best was the seven-dollar preferred stock of Missouri Pacific Railway. When first issued, investors paid one hundred dollars a share for seven dollars yearly preferred dividend. But in bankruptcy, my one hundred dollars bought eight hundred shares. Gradually railways began achieving good earnings again. When the stock went up from one-eighth to five dollars a share, I felt grateful and sold out. Then, within five years, the price rose about $105 per share.
John Templeton

[On his wife suddenly passing away due to a motorcycle accident] I had three young children. I didn’t know how to be a mother to them, but I had to try. I couldn’t spend all day with them because I was in the midst of trying to build a business and earn a living. So I asked one of our two servants, Rosezella Romney, to become the governess for the children. After the first few weeks, I found that the best thing to do was to go back to work, to fill my mind with business. It was much better to keep my mind full of serving clients than to worry over what had happened.
John Templeton

Divide the total value of a company by the number of shares the company has distributed. This calculation will give you the true value of a company’s stock, and if the market price is lower, then it’s a bargain. . . .
John Templeton

If you’re going to produce a better record than other people, you must not buy the same things as the other people.
John Templeton

If you’re going to have a superior record, you have to do something different from what the other security analysts are doing. And when you’re a thousand miles away from Wall Street in a different nation, it’s easier to be independent and buy the things that other people are selling, and sell the things that other people are buying. So that independence has proved to be a valuable help in our long-range performance.
John Templeton



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