Philip Fisher Quotes
100 Philip Fisher Quotes
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Through the entire twentieth century, with a single exception, every time major war has broken out anywhere in the world or whenever American forces have become involved in any fighting, whatever, the American stock market has always plunged sharply downward.
Philip Fisher
At the condition of actual fighting most stocks were selling at levels vastly higher than prevailed before there was any thought of war at all.
Philip Fisher
Don’t follow the crowd.
Philip Fisher
Examine factually and analytically the prevailing financial sentiment about both the industry and the specific company of which he is considering buying shares. If he can find an industry or a company where the prevailing style or mode of financial thinking is considerably less favorable the actual facts warrant, he may reap himself an extra harvest by not following the crowd.
Philip Fisher
Be extra careful when buying into companies and industries that are the current darlings of the financial community…
Philip Fisher
Paying a fancy price for something… because of too favorable interpretation of basic facts, is the investment fad of the moment.
Philip Fisher
The record is crystal clear that fortune – producing growth stocks can be found. However, they cannot be found without hard work and they cannot be found every day.
Philip Fisher
Of one thing the investor can be certain: A large company’s need to bring in a new chief executive from the outside is a damning sign of something basically wrong with the existing management – no matter how good the surface signs may have been as indicated by the most recent earnings statement.
Philip Fisher
Every significant price move of any individual common stock in relation to stocks as a whole occurs because of a changed appraisal of that stock by the financial community.
Philip Fisher
It is my observation that those who sell such stocks to wait for a more suitable time to buy back these same shares seldom attain their objective. They usually wait for a decline to be bigger than it actually turns out to be.
Philip Fisher
The conservative investor must be aware of the nature of the current financial – community appraisal of any industry in which he is interested. [And do the opposite.]
Philip Fisher
To the extent that the general level of stock prices affects the total picture, it also depends somewhat on correctly estimating coming changes in certain purely financial factors, of which interest rates are by far the most important.
Philip Fisher
I had made what I believe was one of the more valuable decisions of my business life. This was to confine all efforts solely to making major gains in the long-run.
Philip Fisher
For the great majority of transactions, being stubborn about a tiny fractional difference in the price can prove extremely costly.
Philip Fisher
The company that doesn’t pioneer, doesn’t take chances, and merely goes along with the crowd is liable to prove a rather mediocre investment in this highly competitive age.
Philip Fisher
There were some remarkable parallels between the period when I was starting my business at the depths of the Great Depression and during the years 1947 through the very early 1950’s, when I was restarting it after a military service interlude of 3.5 years. Both period were times when it was unusually hard to obtain immediate results for clients in the face of overwhelming general pessimism. Both were times that were to prove spectacularly rewarding for those who had the patience.
Philip Fisher
My mistake was to project my skill beyond the limits of experience. I began investing outside the I began investing outside of the industries which I believe I thoroughly understood, in completely different spheres of activity; situations where I did not have comparable background knowledge.
Philip Fisher
I believe that it is hard to be correct in forecasting the short-term movement of stocks more than 60% of the time no matter how diligently the skill is cultivated. This may well be too optimistic an estimate.
Philip Fisher
I had grown too complacent as a result of the enormous success of my investments in this company.
Philip Fisher
Let me underscore my belief that the short-term price movements are so inherently tricky to predict that I do not believe it possible to play the in and out game and still make the enormous profits that have accrued again and again to the truly long-term holder of the right stocks.
Philip Fisher
[On five decades] All of these ten-year periods essentially resembled the others in that the greatest opportunities came from finding situations that were extremely attractive but that were undervalued because at that particular moment the financial community had significantly misjudged the situation.
Philip Fisher
It is often easier to tell what will happen to the price of a stock than how much time will elapse before it happens.
Philip Fisher
There is no quick and easy yardstick for either management or the investor to measure the profitability of research.
Philip Fisher
If the cost of poorly organized research is both high and hard to detect, the cost of too little research may be even higher.
Philip Fisher
Correctly judging the long-range sales curve of a company is of extreme importance to the investor. Superficial judgment can lead to wrong conclusions.
Philip Fisher
The investor usually obtains the best results in companies whose engineering or research is to a considerable extent devoted to products having some business relationship to those already within the scope of company activities.
Philip Fisher
The investor who buys into a situation in which a significant part of earnings comes from paying below-standard wages for the area involved may in time have serious trouble on his hands.
Philip Fisher
The investor will do well to exclude from investment any company that withholds or tries to hide bad news.
Philip Fisher
Probably most costly of all to the investor is the abuse by insiders of their power of issuing common stock options.
Philip Fisher
[On protecting against stock option abuse] Confine investments to companies the managements of which have a highly developed sense of trusteeship and moral responsibility to their stockholders.
Philip Fisher
Finding out which physician had lost the smallest percentage of his practice through death would not be a good way to pick a superb doctor.
Philip Fisher
It would normally be foolhardy for anyone to entrust his savings to the skill of a so-called advisor who, working either for himself or others, had less than five years experience.
Philip Fisher
Be undeterred by fears or hopes based on conjectures, or conclusions based on surmises.
Philip Fisher
An investor should never sell out of an outstanding situation because of the possibility that an ordinary bear market may be about to occur. If the company is really a right one, the next bull market should see the stock making a new peak well above those so far attained. How is the investor to know when to buy back?
Philip Fisher
If you know your common stocks equally well, many of the arguments commonly heard for selling the good one sound equally silly.
Philip Fisher
The corporation that keeps shifting its dividend policies becomes as unsuccessful in attracting a permanent shareholder following. Its shares do not make the best long-range investments.
Philip Fisher
Investors are not always careful to analyze just what has caused them to buy one stock rather than another. If they did, they might be surprised how often they were influenced by the wording and format of the general comments in a company’s annual report to stockholders.
Philip Fisher
Attractive photographs and nicely colored charts do not necessarily reflect a closeknit and able management team working in harmony and with enthusiasm.
Philip Fisher
If the investor owns stock in so many companies that he cannot keep in touch with their managements directly or indirectly, he is rather sure to end up in worse shape than if he had owned stocks in too few companies.
Philip Fisher
War is always bearish on money. To sell stock at the threatened or actual outbreak of hostilities so as to get into cash is extreme financial lunacy. Actually just the opposite should be done.
Philip Fisher
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