233 Quotes by Peter Lynch

While catching up on the news is merely depressing to the citizen who has no stocks, it is a dangerous habit for the investor.

Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it’s doing.

Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

In stage four, once again they’re crowded around me – but this time it’s to tell me what stocks I should buy. Even the dentist has three or four tips, and in the next few days I look up his recommendations in the newspaper and they’ve all gone up. When the neighbors tell me what to buy and then I wish I had taken their advice, it’s a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble.

There’s a company behind every stock and a reason companies – and their stocks – perform the way they do.

A technique that works repeatedly is to wait until the prevailing opinion about a certain industry is that things have gone from bad to worse, and then buy shares in the strongest companies in the group.

If you’re lucky enough to have been rewarded in life to the degree that I have, there comes a point at which you have to decide whether to become a slave to your net worth by devoting the rest of your life to increasing it or to let what you’ve accumulated begin to serve you.

I’m always on the lookout for great companies in lousy industries. A great industry that’s growing fast, such as computers or medical technology, attracts too much attention and too many competitors.

All you need for a lifetime of successful investing is a few big winners, and the pluses from those will overwhelm the minuses from the stocks that don’t work out.