Investing doesn’t have to be hard. It’s just the people who make money off your confusion that want you to think it does.
The reality is that good investing can be made very simple. You can use just a few funds (or even just one) and spend only a couple of hours per year on your investments and still make out better than the vast majority of other investors.
But you have to know the truth. To help you get there I’ve collected some of the greatest quotes about investing from some of history’s best investors.
Enjoy!
“The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different.’-Sir John Templeton
“He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.-Leonardo da Vinci
“If you’re prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so the fifth grader won’t get bored.-Peter Lynch
“Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.-Warren Buffett
“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.-Paul Samuelson
“How long you stay invested for will likely be the single most important factor determining how well you do at investing.-Morgan Housel
“You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don’t understand that’s going to happen, then you’re not ready, you won’t do well in the markets.-Peter Lynch
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.-Albert Einstein
“Calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.-Warren Buffett
“There are two kinds of investors, be thay large or small: those who don’t know where the market is headed, and those who don’t know that they don’t know.-William Bernstein
“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.-Warren Buffett
“You are under no obligation to read or watch financial news. If you do, you are under no obligation to take any of it seriously.-Morgan Housel
“A successful investor has a good knowledge base, a well-defined investment plan, and nerves of steel to stick with it.-Andrew Clarke
“It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.-Jesse Livermore
“You can control your portfolio allocation, your own education, who you choose to listen to, what you choose to read, what evidence you choose to pay attention to, and how you respond to certain events. You cannot control what the Fed does, laws Congress sets, the next jobs report, or whether a company will beat earnings estimates. Focus on the former; try to ignore the latter.-Morgan Housel
“Know what you own, and know why you own it.-Peter Lynch
“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.-Warren Buffett
“Compound interest is the most powerful force on earth.-Albert Einstein
“Everything beats the market—except investors.-Dan Bortolotti
“Since 1900 the S&P 500 has returned about 6% per year, but the average difference between any year’s highest close and lowest close is 23%. Remember this the next time someone tries to explain why the market is up or down by a few percentage points. They are basically trying to explain why summer came after spring.-Morgan Housel
“The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.-Benjamin Graham
“Our favorite holding period is forever.-Warren Buffett
“Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!-Jack Bogle
“In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.-Robert Arnott
“It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.-Robert Shiller
“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.-Robert G. Allen
“My experience indicates that most people who’ve accumulated a great deal of wealth haven’t had that as their goal at all. Wealth is only a by-product, not the original motivation.-Michael Milken
“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.-Warren Buffett
“When you give up the hope that some advisor, some system, some source of inside tips is going to give you a shortcut to wealth, you’ll finally begin to gain control over your financial future.-Harry Browne
“How long you stay invested for will likely be the single most important factor determining how well you do at investing.-Morgan Housel
“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.-Warren Buffett
“We ignore outlooks and forecasts… we’re lousy at it and we admit it … everyone else is lousy too, but most people won’t admit it.-Martin Whitman
“Benign neglect, bordering on sloth, remains the hallmark of our investment process.-Warren Buffett
“But note this important fact: The true investor scarcely ever is forced to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free to disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and not more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons’ mistakes of judgment.-Benjamin Graham
“Indexing is a successful approach to investing not because it’s simple, but because it has performed so much better than the average active manager (the opposite of indexing), and the simplicity is just an added bonus.-Patrick Geddes
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.-Charlie Munger
“In the long run, it’s not just how much money you make that will determine your future prosperity. It’s how much of that money you put to work by saving it and investing it.-Peter Lynch
“If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.-George Soros
“Never invest in a business you can’t understand.-Warren Buffett
“If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.-George Soros
“Investors want to believe in someone. Forecasters want to earn a nice living. One of those groups is going to get suckered. I think you know who.-Morgan Housel
“Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas.-Warren Buffett
“October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.-Mark Twain
“It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.-Robert Shiller
“Acknowledge the complexity of the world and resist the impression that you easily understand it. People are too quick to accept conventional wisdom, because it sounds basically true and it tends to be reinforced by both their peers and opinion leaders, many of whome have never looked at whether the facts support the received wisdom. It’s a basic fact of life that many things “everybody knows” turn out to be wrong.-Jim Rogers
“The broker said the stock was “poised to move.” Silly me, I thought he meant up.-Randy Thurman
