Quotes on Stocks

I think you have to be an undying optimist, and perhaps a Pollyanna to enjoy and to be successful at managing common stock portfolios over a long period of time.

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

There are two sound reasons for investing in common stocks -- growth of income and growth of principal.

There are people that own electronic stocks that don't know the difference between an EEPROM and the senior prom and they're trying to buy stocks.

People are very careful with their money. When they buy a refrigerator, they do some work. When they buy an apartment or rent an apartment, they’re careful. For some reason, when it comes to stocks, they just go coo-coo. They don't do any work at all.

You only need one or two good stocks a decade. You don't need a lot of action.

It is easy, of course, to pick out good companies, companies that are better than other companies. But that is not the same thing as picking out good stocks to buy at their current prices.

Please do not forget that as the common stock level advances, the advantages of common stocks appear to be more attractive and the basic need for owning them becomes more persuasive in everybody’s reasoning. Yet in fact, common stocks undoubtedly become riskier as the price advances, and thus the risk increases as the widespread acceptance of common stock develops.

The trading favorites of 1928 were high-priced, untried, and unseasoned stocks that made one wonder whether the public did not think that the higher the price the better the stock.

It is one of the common pieces of Wall Street experience that when the public goes stock mad and the market leaders are filled with the arrogance of prolonged success, such little things as high money rates or decreases in earnings or unraised dividends have no instant effect on the market -- that is, on the state of mind of the speculating public. In the end, of course, all violations of the fundamental laws of economic and financial common sense are paid for; but every bull thinks he will unload before the break.

"Easy money" means only one thing when it means money that has come easy: It means money goes even more easily than it came.

Happy is the man who has no past! The same seems to be true of corporations in a bull market.

Buying stocks of prosperous concerns may be good business -- but only at a certain price. But if you will make sure you know what you are getting for your money, you will be doing what nobody does in a bull market.

The P/E ratio is only a reflection of what most investors expect to happen at a point in time, and that is neither here nor there in terms of what actually will happen.

Neither the corporate executive nor the investment manager can allow himself to be lulled into the belief that any company, regardless of its record of achievement, must necessarily provide satisfactory rates of growth.

Past corporate successes are only frail guides to future good fortune.

All stocks are "two-decision" stocks; and no such thing as a "one-decision" stock exists.

The influence on stock prices are so numerous and so complex that no person has ever been able to predict the trend of stock prices with consistent success.

I have nothing against a stock split. I did two in the Sixties, but this is really a non-event. So is the stock dividend. It's really paper shuffling.

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results. The better sales will be the frosting on the cake.

The addition of the one-hundredth stock simply can't reduce the potential variance in portfolio performance sufficiently to compensate for the negative effect its inclusion has on the overall portfolio expectation.

The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a liability whereby its periodic aberrations, in turn, formulate your judgments.

Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price.

My approach to bonds is pretty much like my approach to stocks. If I can't understand something, I tend to forget it.

Stock prices reflect the obvious, not the obscure.

The history of the stock market shows many periods of twenty years or more when stock prices ended up precisely where they began.

Common stocks properly selected and long-range will prove so attractive that I don't believe that other forms of assets are a more attractive or suitable vehicle.

You’re not buying a stock, you’re buying part ownership in a business. You will do well if the business does well. And if you didn't pay a totally silly price.

The stock doesn't know you own it.

Equities are a claim on uncertain future earnings.

So long as a capitalist system persists and the financial markets hold together, equities do have a built-in long-term rate of return. That rate of return is a nominal measure of the economy.

Discrepancies -- and hence opportunities -- in securities originate most often when events move faster than quotations.

It's not earnings changes that cause stock price changes, but earnings changes that come as a surprise.

I am much more inclined to buy a stock that has been kicked out of an index because then it may have value characteristics -- it has underperformed.

A cheap stock can stay cheap forever, but if you own a bankrupt bond, the process of emerging from bankruptcy and distributing new securities offers a practical catalyst to realize the value.

Investing is buying a fractional interest in a business and buying debt claims on a business.

If the stock market has a period of outperformance of its long-term return, it is inevitably followed by some period of underperformance. But people being optimistic and greedy by nature take the recent short-term outperformance of stocks as a sign of good things to come, rather than a warning of bad things to come.

One of the illusions that people on Wall Street have is that they can have perfect information on a stock.

If discounting terrific things are already in the stock, I don't want to own it.

I always thought if you looked at ten companies, you'd find one that's interesting, if you'd look at 20, you'd find two, or if you look at hundred you'll find ten. The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game.

Just because we think a stock is undervalued doesn't mean we're right. We may be wrong in our judgment.

I don't think people understand there's 100% correlation with what happens to a company's earnings over several years and what happens to the stock.

Some stocks go up 20-30 percent and they get rid of it and hold onto the dogs. And it's sort of like watering the weeds and cutting out the flowers. You want to let the winners run.

I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one or two of 'em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result.

You can lose money very fast, in two months, but you very rarely make money very fast in the stock market. When I look back, my great stocks took a long time to work out.

While we can learn from the long run about how bonds and stocks respond to changing environments and to each other, the long run can tell us perilously little about what kinds of environments lie ahead.

The best companies often thrive even as their competitors struggle to survive.

I can't say enough about the fact that earnings are the key to success in investing in stocks. No matter what happens to the market, the earnings will determine the results.

If a stock has gone sideways for a couple of years, and the fundamentals are decent, and you can find something new that's positive in the company, then if you're wrong, the stock will probably continue to go sideways, and you won't lose a lot of money. But if you're right, that stock is going north.

The history of business the world over is full of examples of businesses which have grown from modest beginnings to stupendous earning power.

The novice soon learns that stocks are likely to maintain an upward or downward trend for long periods of time with minor interruptions of the major trend.

The general state of business thus does not forecast the course of stock prices except in the apparently paradoxical fashion that great prosperity affords an advantageous time for selling stocks, extreme business depression an opportunity for purchase.

Don't buy "cheap" stocks just because they're cheap. Buy them because the fundamentals are improving.

Stocks do well for a reason and do poorly for a reason. Make sure you know the reasons.

If your only reason for picking a stock is that an expert likes it, then what you really need is paid professional help.

Tip one: Don't buy stocks on tips alone.

People worry about the riskiness of stocks, but bonds can be just as risky.

If you don't believe corporate profits will continue to rise, and you can't stomach a decline in the market, don't buy stocks or equity mutual funds.

A correction is a wonderful opportunity to buy your favorite companies at a bargain price.

Ultimately, to be an investor in stocks, you have to believe that American business has a decent future, as well as business worldwide, and that corporations will continue to increase their profits.

As corporate profits increase, corporations become more valuable, and sooner or later, their shares will sell for a higher price.

What makes stocks valuable in the long run isn't "the market." It's the profitability of the shares in the companies you own.

Long-term bonds can be almost as volatile as stocks. They have their own corrections.

It's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that gyrations in a stock price may tell us absolutely nothing about the prospects of the company involved.

Here's my investment motto of the month: It's the company, stupid.

Just because the good news is already out doesn't mean it's too late to invest.

The very existence of doubt creates the conditions for a big gain in the stock once the fears are put to rest. The trick is to put your fears to rest by doing the research and checking the facts -- before the competition does.

If you own stocks, there's always something to worry about. You can't get away from it.

You only need a few really big stocks in a lifetime to make a lot of money.

One or two good stocks can make up for lots of losers, and produce superior results.

Most useful and most dangerous are the stock market averages, most useful in revealing the general trend of the market, most dangerous if they mislead the trader into forgetting that, after all, his profits depend on the movements of the individual stocks in which he deals.

Individual stocks may obviously pursue courses widely dissimilar.

In analyzing stocks, industrials or otherwise, the speculator must constantly bear in mind that no two companies are strictly comparable. He must always be prepared to make due allowance for points of unlikeness.

Stocks often sell at ridiculously low levels for considerable periods merely because few people know anything about them.

The stock market itself seems to be mainly driven by fashions and fads. However, when you look at individual stocks, it’s a different story, because individual stocks are much more diverse, and some of them can be predicted to perform well over the long run.

People say the market is overvalued, but if you are only looking at certain names, you will always find times when those names are undervalued. That's what we're waiting for.

I never in all my life bought a stock because I liked it. I bought it because it was a cheaper bargain than any similar stock I would buy anywhere in the rest of the world.

It's now a rent-a-stock industry, compared with the old own-a-stock industry when turnover was 16 percent and the average holding period was six years.

It becomes more and more evident that stock prices are not alone determined by high or low credit, earnings or carloadings. There is another mighty factor which cannot be charted along with the various business indices. It is how high or how low are the hearts of men and women during the given period.

The trouble with stockholders, in my humble opinion, is that not enough of them are disgruntled.

Those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap.

We want to get more earnings for the price we're paying.

The only significance of stock market gyrations to the true investor is that they give him an opportunity to buy good common stocks when they are cheap -- or at least reasonably priced -- and at times offer him an invitation to sell out at temptingly high levels.

A common stock investor is one who regards his common stock holdings as a proprietary interest in various businesses, not as a series of quotations in a newspaper.

The true measure of common stocks values, of course, is not found by reference to price movements alone, but by price in relation to earnings, dividends, future prospects and, to a small extent, asset values.

It is an axiom of investment that securities should be purchased because the buyer believes in their soundness, and not because he needs a certain income.

To my mind, the so-called growth-stock investor -- or the average security analyst for that matter -- has no idea of how much to pay for a growth stock, how many stocks to buy to obtain the desired return, or how their prices will behave.

The value approach has been founded on the premise that in many -- but by no means in all -- cases a dependable range of valuation can be established for a common stock by analytical techniques; that often this range differs substantially from the current price; and that such differences offer rewarding opportunities for investment operations.

Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earning power through economic changes or deterioration in management.

To establish the right price for a stock the market must have adequate information, but it by no means follows that if the market has this information it will thereupon establish the right price.

Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information is sound judgment.

I am an exponent of the philosophy that the main objective of common stock investment should be pricing, not timing; and by pricing I mean the endeavor to buy securities at prices which are attractive, letting timing take care of itself.

It is a safe prediction for me to make that, in future years as in the past, common stocks will advance too far and decline too far, and that investors, like speculators -- and institutions, like individuals -- will have their periods of enchantment and disenchantment with equities.

I think the future of equities will be roughly the same as their past; in particular, common stock purchases will prove satisfactory when made at appropriate price levels.

I insist that more damage has been done to stock values and to the future of equities from inside Wall Street than from outside Wall Street.

All my experience goes to show that most investment advisers take their opinions and measures of stock values from stock prices. In the stock market, value standards do not determine prices; prices determine value standards.

In 44 years of Wall Street experience and study, I have never seen dependable calculations made about common stock values, or related investment policies, that went beyond simple arithmetic or the most elementary algebra.

To consider stocks by groups rather than by individual companies is further to ignore the vital factor of management.

There is evidence that the stock market is more efficient in processing information about what other investors are doing than it is in processing fundamental information about the underlying assets, which is why stock prices so often turn out with hindsight to have been crazy rather than rational.

Price is the essential determinant in every investment equation. At some price, every company is a buy; at some price, every company is a hold; and at a still higher price, every company is a sell. We do not really recognize the concept of a value company.

When stocks are rising for no better reason than that they have risen, the greater fool is at work.

Stocks are not lottery tickets. There's a company behind every stock. If the company does well, the stock does well. It's not that complicated.

If you can't explain to a 10-year-old in two minutes or less why you own a stock, you shouldn't own it.

My system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them.

The true measure of common stock values, of course, is not found by reference to price movements alone, but by price in relation to earnings, dividends, future prospects and, to a small extent, asset values.

If a common stock is a good investment it is also a good speculation.

Warren and I are chicken about buying stocks on margin. There's always a slight chance of catastrophe when you own securities pledged to others. The ideal is to borrow in a way no temporary thing can disturb you.

Only novel "soft-shelled" ideas produce extraordinary returns, because the obvious ideas are already reflected in a stock's price.

It's absolute cockamamie crazy to sell stocks after they drop. Instead, you should say, "Today there's a first-rate bargain and I'm buying."

Whether stocks rise or fall is determined by innumerable forces and elements, by economic conditions, the actions of governments, the state of international affairs, the emotions of people -- even the vagaries of the weather.

People invest in stocks for two opposite reasons -- in hope and confidence in the future of an enterprise or in fear that the value of their capital will be lost through inflation.

I believe that the trend of stock equities will continue in the future as it has in the past -- and that is irregularly upward, with some emphasis upon the adverb irregularly.

What the corporate tax actually works out as is a dilution of the stock equities. It is the equivalent of a payment of a stock dividend which goes to the government instead of to the stockholders.

I've always found that if you find 10 stocks you really like and buy three, you always pick the wrong three. So I just buy all 10.

If the relative stability of general business and corporate profits produces an unlimited enthusiasm and demand for common stocks, then it must eventually produce instability in stock prices.

Sound common stocks, bought at sound prices, are always good investments.

Good common stocks are investment media which are subject to speculative influences. The speculative influences are not in the common stocks; they are in the minds of the people who buy and sell them.

The problem of investment in common stocks is either to insulate yourselves from the speculative influences, or else to adjust your investment policy so that you can take advantage of the speculative fluctuations that are imposed upon the basic investment quality of common stocks.