Kenneth L. Fisher > Quotes

“Buy straw hats in the winter, when nobody wants them, and sell them in the summer when everybody needs them.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Graham was not only the original quantitative analyst, to whom today's whole school of such thinking owes its heritage, but he was also a source of much of the fundamental analysis and lore that Wall Streeters follow today.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“In investing, the crowd is wrong much more often than right.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently

“The stock market is almost magical because it always leads the economy. It goes down long before the economy drops and then heads higher long before the economy rebounds. It always has.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, The Wall Street Waltz: 90 Visual Perspectives : Illustrated Lessons from Financial Cycles and Trends

“...it's a good idea to remember that whenever there is a buy and a seller, somebody is wrong. Make sure it's not you”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, The Wall Street Waltz: 90 Visual Perspectives : Illustrated Lessons from Financial Cycles and Trends

“He even invented being "fashionably late.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“As early as 1947, Birrell had acquired Doeskin Products, a listed corporation, by selling it $2 million in overvalued securities, then using the proceeds to buy out the controlling stockholders. In essence, he bought it with its own money!”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Within four years, Belmont's name was on the lips of every New Yorker. He was the city's leading investment banker and the hottest thing to hit society-and he was a Jew.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Mayer, still not content with the excess, next began operating a money exchange bureau in their yard. What's considered the very first Rothschild bank appeared to be a nine-square-foot hut-but things weren't quite what they appeared to be. Mayer installed a large iron chest that, when opened from the back, revealed a stairway leading to a secret storage cellar.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Once, early on, while still engaged in shipping and sidetracked by a rare vacation in his lavish, specially built yacht, he came back to find that his partners had ousted
him from his firm. The classic Vanderbilt response? "I won't sue you for the law is too slow. I will ruin you!”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“One of their most famous coups was underwriting a $10 million loan for a growing mail-order house called Sears, Roebuck, headed by Goldman's distant relative. It was the first time a mail-order security had ever been on the market-a calculated risk, but one that paid off.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“1. Keep speculation and investments separate.
2. Don't be fooled by a name.
3. Be wary of new promotions.
4. Give due consideration to market ability.
5. Don't buy without proper facts.
6. Safeguard purchases through diversification.
7. Don't try to diversify by buying different securities of the same company.
8. Small companies should be carefully scrutinized.
9. Buy adequate security, not super abundance.
10. Choose your dealer and buy outright. (Babson abhorred any type of margin or installment payment plans and, in fact, claimed he never borrowed money.)”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Sure enough, America was shocked by Babson's words: "More people are borrowing and speculating today than ever in our history. Sooner or later a crash is coming which will take in the leading stocks and cause a decline of from 60 to 80 points in the Dow Jones barometer. Wise are those investors who get out of debt and reef their sails.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“They bought blocks of bonds priced from 80 to 82 cents on the dollar, paying for them in bank notes worth half their face value!”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Astor was among his era's most controversial figures because of his millions-and the methods by which he earned them.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Girard, who really was a vegetarian, financed America's earliest trade endeavors, becoming America's first richest man.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Different, not opposite. That’s the key to using professional forecasts—and the key to being a contrarian.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently

“My special job is the most interesting I know of anywhere. More fun than being king, pope, or prime minister anywhere-for no one can turn me out of it and I don't have to make any compromises with principles," Morgan once said. His principles-"Do your work; be honest; keep your word; help when you can; be fair"-were the words he lived by.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“No professional Wall Street tipster or plausible promoter can turn a sane person into a stock gambler as easily as his next-door neighbor bragging about his winnings. If all men profited by experience, the world would be peopled exclusively by the wise....”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“ike the Rothschilds before him in Europe, August Belmont helped transform America from a provincial and almost purely agricultural nation to a prosperous industrial country.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“People must be right sometimes, must feel good sometimes, or we’d never have a herd. They would just give up. The occasional rightness fosters false confidence, reinforcing the crowd’s wisdom. It is plausible deniability for TGH. It is how TGH repeatedly sucks the crowd in, makes them ignore negatives, then doles out maximum pain and suffering.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently

“Stock watering, bribery, and stock corners were all methods to his madness, but for good reason. "My God, you don't suppose you can run a railroad in accordance with the statutes of New York, do you?”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“1. Divide capital into 10 equal parts and never risk more than a tenth of it on any one trade.
2. Never overtrade.
3. Never let a profit run into a loss.
4. Do not buck the trend.
5. Trade only in active stocks.
6. When in doubt, get out, and don't get in when in doubt.
7. Never buy just to get a dividend.
8. Never average a loss.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Their fame is based to a large extent on how the pigeons enabled Nathan to know before anyone else outside the battle zone of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Although banking was then still in its rudimentary state, Nathan fully understood the interplay between finance and economics, the effects of political news on the stock exchange, the quickest way to bull or bear a market, and how gold reserves affected the exchange rate.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“harting the rise of Lehman Brothers, one of Wall Street's greatest investment banking houses, essentially traces the gradual emergence of a powerful, industrial United States. Beginning as cotton brokers in an agricultural society, the first Lehmans to arrive in America helped finance the Confederacy during the Civil War, and then turned to Wall Street to dabble in commodities well into the 1900s.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher

“Ultimately, the Rothschilds united to form a sturdy, efficient moneychain across Europe that financed its industrial revolution, creating a common money market for the first time.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Morgan challenged London's established banking firms and eventually surpassed them, becoming the most important American banker in London in the 1860s.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market

“Mayer Rothschild created a financial dynasty that grew to finance the development of western civilization. Because of Rothschild and the banking house he built with his five sons, money flowed throughout Europe with ease, enabling the industrial revolution to take place and lift Europe from the dark ages.”
― Kenneth L. Fisher, 100 Minds That Made the Market