Quotes on Market Crash

In the history of every great catastrophe, you will find that some masterly bit of stupidity sets fire to the oil-soaked rags.

One thing all of us know for sure is that the stock market doesn't go down just because a lot of folks think that it has entered the heart of looney land.

There's an old market saying about stocks to the effect that they all go down together.

Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell. October 24, 1929 showed that what is mysterious is not inevitable. Often there were no buyers, and only wide vertical declines could anyone be induced to bid.

What we do know is that speculative episodes never come gently to an end. The wise, though for most the improbable, course is to assume the worst.

The tour we've taken through the last century proves that market irrationality of an extreme kind periodically erupts -- and compellingly suggests that investors wanting to do well had better learn how to deal with the next outbreak.

Human nature being what it is, small loopholes are likely to be exploited until they become big ones, and big ones until they turn into financial disasters.

It would be silly to expect every bear market to turn into the Great Depression. It would be equally wrong to expect that a fall from overvalued, to more fairly valued, couldn't badly overshoot on the downside.

You must always be prepared for the unexpected, including sudden, sharp downward swings in markets and the economy. Whatever adverse scenario you can contemplate, reality can be far worse.

When the next fear-inspired panic occurs, investors' finger-pointing will almost certainly be aimed outward, while a good part of the blame should instead be directed inward.

People seeking answers to why the market plunged usually emphasize the immediate events that precipitated a selling panic, when in fact these events are but minor symptoms of much more severe underlying problems.

If you looked at September 1986 to October '87, the market was unchanged. It had a thousand points up and a thousand points down and they only remember the down.

People who exit the stock market to avoid a decline are odds-on favorites to miss the next rally.

Missing the bottom on the way up won't cost you anything. It's missing the top on the way down that's always expensive.

Everybody in the world is a long-term investor until the market goes down.

You need to know the market's going to go down sometimes. If you're not ready for that, you shouldn't own stocks. And it's good when it happens.

What you learn from history is the market goes down. It goes down a lot.

As a rule, Panics do not destroy capital; they merely reveal the extent to which it has been previously destroyed by its betrayal into hopelessly unproductive works.

The malady of commercial crisis is not, in essence, a matter of the purse but of the mind.

Once a boom is well started, it cannot be arrested. It can only be collapsed.