44 Quotes by Eugene Fama

The proposition is that prices reflect all available information, which in simple terms means since prices reflect all available information, there's no way to beat the market.

Market timing doesn't work. If all the bubbles and all this mispricing really exist, how come so few people see it before it turns out that way?

An investor doesn't have a prayer of picking a manager that can deliver true alpha.

Everybody wants the world to be a better place, and some think that government actions can bring that about. But they don't take into consideration that government actions can often do more harm than good.

Active investment is a zero-sum game. Passive managers don't play the game. They buy something resembling the market as a whole, or some segment of the market, and they don't respond to the actions of active managers.

With less regulation, I think you would see growth come back. Of course, there are situations where you need regulation. Antitrust regulation, for example, is a good idea because you want competition. But beyond that, it gets very difficult.

The problem that people don't understand is that active managers, almost by definition, have to be poorly diversified. Otherwise, they're not really active. They have to make bets. What that means is there's a huge dispersion of outcomes that are totally consistent with just chance. There's no skill involved it. It's just good luck or bad luck.

All the central banks are doing is substituting one form of debt with another form of debt. They're issuing short term debt and using it to buy long term debt. In finance, we tend to think that's a neutral activity, even though those stimulus programs are huge.

I think bubbles are things people see with 20/20 hindsight. If you look at any particular period where prices go up and then they go down, you will always find people who predicted that they would go down. Those are the people you pay attention to.