Peter Lynch Quotes

200 Peter Lynch Quotes

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There is always something to worry about. Avoid weekend thinking and ignore the latest dire predictions of the newscasters. Sell a stock because the company's fundamentals deteriorate, not because the sky is falling.
Peter Lynch

Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy, or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what's actually happening to the companies in which you've invested.
Peter Lynch

If you study 10 companies, you'll find 1 for which the story is better than expected. If you study 50, you'll find 5. There are always pleasant surprises to be found in the stock market—companies whose achievements are being overlooked on Wall Street.
Peter Lynch

If you don't study any companies, you have the same success buying stocks as you do in a poker game if you bet without looking at your cards.
Peter Lynch

Time is on your side when you own shares of superior companies. You can afford to be patient—even if you missed Wal-Mart in the first five years, it was a great stock to own in the next five years. Time is against you when you own options.
Peter Lynch

If you have the stomach for stocks, but neither the time nor the inclination to do the homework, invest in equity mutual funds. Here, it's a good idea to diversify. You should own a few different kinds of funds, with managers who pursue different styles of investing: growth, value, small companies, large companies, etc. Investing in six of the same kind of fund is not diversification.
Peter Lynch

The capital-gains tax penalizes investors who do too much switching from one mutual fund to another. If you've invested in one fund or several funds that have done well, don't abandon them capriciously. Stick with them.
Peter Lynch

Among the major stock markets of the world, the U.S. market ranks eighth in total return over the past decade. You can take advantage of the faster-growing economies by investing some portion of your assets in an overseas fund with a good record.
Peter Lynch

In the long run, a portfolio of well-chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.
Peter Lynch

My routine is always the same. I search for companies that are undervalued, and I usually find them in sectors or industries that are out of favour.
Peter Lynch



Whenever a popular stock suffers a big drop in price, especially a stock that is widely held by mutual funds, Wall Street has to make up a reason for the decline that gets the fund managers off the hook for owning it…. The real reason these stocks have declined is that they had gotten terrifically overpriced relative to current earnings.
Peter Lynch

In the end, superior companies will succeed and mediocre companies will fail, and investors in each will be rewarded accordingly.
Peter Lynch

Stop listening to professionals!
Peter Lynch

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.
Peter Lynch

Dumb money is only dumb when it listens to the smart money.
Peter Lynch

People seem more comfortable investing in something about which they are entirely ignorant.
Peter Lynch

There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don’t understand it, then put your life savings into it.
Peter Lynch

Ultimately it is not the stock market nor even the companies themselves that determine an investor’s fate. It is the investor.
Peter Lynch

Small investors tend to be pessimistic and optimistic at precisely the wrong times.
Peter Lynch

When you ask a bank to handle your investments, mediocrity is all you’re going to get in a majority of cases.
Peter Lynch



My biggest disadvantage is size. The bigger the equity fund, the harder it gets for it to outperform the competition.
Peter Lynch

Expecting a $9 billion fund to compete successfully against an $800 million fund is the same as expecting Larry Bird to star in basketball games with a five pound weight strapped to his waist.
Peter Lynch

I continue to think like an amateur as frequently as possible.
Peter Lynch

If you invest like an institution, you’re doomed to perform like one, which in many cases isn’t very well.
Peter Lynch

You can find terrific opportunities in the neighbourhood or at the workplace, months or even years before the news has reached the analysts and the fund managers they advise.
Peter Lynch

The stock market demands conviction as surely as it victimises the unconvinced.
Peter Lynch

Investing in debt isn’t bad.
Peter Lynch

There’s no such thing as a can’t miss blue chip.
Peter Lynch

Stocks are most likely accepted as prudent at the moment they’re not.
Peter Lynch

Only invest what you could afford to lose without that loss having any effect on your daily life in the foreseeable future.
Peter Lynch



Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards.
Peter Lynch

A share of a stock is not a lottery ticket. It’s part ownership of a business.
Peter Lynch

When looking at the same sky, people in mature industries see clouds where people in immature industries see pie.
Peter Lynch

If you can’t convince yourself ‘When I’m down 25 percent, I’m a buyer’ and banish forever the fatal thought ‘When I’m down 25 percent, I’m a seller,’ then you’ll never make a decent profit in stocks.
Peter Lynch

‘Buy a share in America’ ought to be changed to ‘Buy an option on America’.
Peter Lynch

I’ve never bought a future nor an option in my entire investing career, and I can’t imagine buying one now.
Peter Lynch

The market, like individual stocks, can move in the opposite direction of the fundamentals over the short term.
Peter Lynch

Understand the nature of the companies you own and the specific reasons for holding the stock. (‘It is really going up!’ doesn’t count.)
Peter Lynch

By putting your stocks into categories you’ll have a better idea of what to expect from them.
Peter Lynch

Big companies have small moves, small companies have big moves.
Peter Lynch



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