Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
China's stock market is inextricably tied to politics.
The stock market is a discounter of all known information.
In a bubble, anyone who argues pessimistically is seen as crazy.
Over rolling long periods, U.S. and non-U.S. stocks tend to equalize.
The world is filled with successful small businesses that stay small.
Having different types of stocks in your portfolio can enhance returns.
Originally, I thought Republican. Now I'm an equal opportunity politician-hater.
Readers regularly ask what can go wrong but almost never what could positively surprise.
A constant in my approach to investing: You should think politically but unconventionally.
Despite its many critics, hydraulic fracturing will change the nature of energy production.
Global stocks bottomed in June 1921, but global economies didn't hit bottom for fully two more years.
Both cheap value stocks and more glamorous growth stocks can work well in a portfolio - if done right.
When the economies of emerging markets don't just grow but beat expectations, there's scarcely a mention.
The average mutual fund holding period for equity or fixed income is only about three years. It's too short.
Buy into good, well-researched companies and then wait. Let's call it a sit-on-your-hands investment strategy.
Many follow a rule of thumb - no more than 5% in one stock. But that's not the entrepreneurial road to riches.
You may have seen my firm's ads screaming, 'I Hate Annuities.' Folks ask why we run them. Simple: Because I do.
I can find only one bull market, in 1935, that didn't have some material indigestion within its first 12 months.
If you've taken Econ 101, you know that the quantity of money rises only when the banking system makes a net loan.
Normally, the market peaks before bad news emerges. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what happened in 2000.
The more you talk about investing problems, the worse you feel. Instead of complaining, it's better to do something.
What is the most common investor mistake? Trading - getting in and getting out at all the wrong times, for all the wrong reasons.
All equity categories, correctly calculated, create near-identical lifelong returns. They just get there via wildly differing paths.
Fundamentally cheap stocks are often held in low regard by market participants. Something may be tainting their perception in investors' minds.
When I was a young man in the 1970s, tech firms were scattered across the developed world. Since then, America has come to dominate tech almost totally.
Fracking opens up vast tracts of the U.S. to exploitation by gas drillers. There's enough energy under our feet to last us for decades, maybe centuries.
If some stock categories get too hot-and-pricey, mass supply is created via stock offerings to tap that cheap money - and, when overdone, drives it all down.
The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood.
Windmills and solar cells are carbon-free sources of electricity. But they are costly. If you've been investing in those, give it up. That game is effectively over.
Most investors give too much credence to the theory that prices are rational; they presume that a market collapse must have been justified by serious economic trouble.
I never liked quantitative easing. It's misunderstood by almost everybody. Flattening the yield curve is not stimulative; flattening the yield curve is anti-stimulative.
Investors covet past improvements but also always believe pricing unimaginable future creativity and efficiency gains is Pollyannaish. And they're always wrong. Bet on it.
To me 'The Big Easy' is shorthand for owning big stocks that are easy for wary investors to buy into. These stocks tend to outperform during the back half of bull markets.
My firm has 25,000 high-net-worth clients. A typical account would be that of a couple aged 65 and 60 who need their money to last the rest of their lives, 25 to 35 years.
In the early days, I promoted the idea of spending time in libraries to gain facts that other investors didn't have. Not many people did that kind of research, so it worked.
My father, Philip Fisher, was the toughest guy I ever knew. An example: He had terrible teeth, yet he got his fillings done without ever using a painkiller. Now, that's tough!
If you are prepared for some risk, junk bonds pay about 5%, but they tend to get whacked when interest rates rise. Same with lower-yielding but higher-quality corporate bonds.
In history, the evidence is overwhelming: Stock market bottoms happen, and then stocks jolt upwards while the economy keeps getting worse - sometimes by a lot and for a long time.
Indeed, bull markets are fueled by successive waves of prior skeptics finally capitulating as their fears fade. Eventually, fear turns to euphoria, and that's the stuff of bubbles.
The latter part of bull markets are typically led by stocks that are seen then as high quality, but the ones that do best are the ones that weren't seen as such high quality before.
Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know.
Long before folks fretted the demise of 'quantitative easing,' I fretted its existence. It proved the reverse of its image, an antistimulus, and we've done okay not because of it, but despite it.
The upward move at the beginning of a bull market is almost always huge compared with the vacillations late in the bear market. If you try to pick a bottom, you will miss a good part of the action.
If you're 35, 45, or even 55 - you have a very long time horizon - 40 years or vastly more. That is you, and/or your spouse, are likely to live about that long, and you'll be investing the whole way.
Plenty of funds have fine long-term returns despite being tax-inefficient and generally costly. But a dirty secret is this: Average, no-load fund investors do much worse than the funds - or the market.
One component of the leading economic indicators is the yield curve. Bond investors keep a close eye on this, as it illustrates the spread or difference between long-term interest rates and short-term ones.
I've long loved emerging markets airlines because they usually sell at bargain prices. The troubled history of developed market airlines unfairly taints these stocks. In the emerging world, they're growth stocks.
China frequently confounds stock market prognosticators because it has a penchant for straying markedly from other broad global indexes year-by-year over the decades - even from emerging markets. It's hit or miss.
Generally, variations in earnings aren't nearly as impactful on glamour growth stocks as are changes in image and, well, sexiness. I often think of glamour stocks as though they are attractive women dressing to the nines.
In the world I've known most of my life, old stories quickly lose their power over capital markets and get replaced by new surprises. That which everyone fixates on gets priced into the stock market quickly and can't drag on.