Ranjit Kulkarni

Philip Fisher was an American investor best known as the pioneer of growth investing and the author of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, a guide to growth investing that has remained in print ever since it was first published in 1958.

1. There is a complicating factor that makes the handling of investment mistakes more difficult. This is the ego in each of us. None of us likes to admit to himself that he has been wrong. If we have made a mistake in buying a stock but can sell the stock at a small profit, we have somehow lost any sense of having been foolish.

2. On the other hand, if we sell at a small loss we are quite unhappy about the whole matter. This reaction, while completely natural and normal, is probably one of the most dangerous in which we can indulge ourselves in the entire investment process.

3. More money has probably been lost by investors holding a stock they really did not want until they could ‘at least come out even’ than from any other single reason. If to these actual losses are added the profits that might have been made through the proper reinvestment of these funds if such reinvestment had been made when the mistake was first realized, the cost of self-indulgence becomes truly tremendous.”

4. Investment is rarely an optimized process in hindsight. Most of the time, you can attempt to position yourself for a sub-optimal return, which ain’t too bad at all.

5. I don’t want a lot of good investments; I want a few outstanding ones. If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is almost never.

6. I remember my sense of shock some half-dozen years ago when I read a [stock] recommendation to sell shares of a company . . . The recommendation was not based on any long-term fundamentals. Rather, it was that over the next six months the funds could be employed more profitably elsewhere.

7. The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

1. Successful investing is only common sense. Each system for investing will eventually become obsolete.

2. The time to buy a stock is when the short-term owners have finished selling and the time to sell a stock is often when short-term owners have finished their buying.

3. Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria. The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy and sell.

4. “This time is different” are among the most costly four words in market history.

5. Search for bargains. You should try to buy that particular investment whose market price is lowest in relation to your estimate of its true value.

6. I never ask if the market is going to go up or down, because I don’t know, and besides it doesn’t matter. I search nation after nation for stocks, asking: “Where is the one that is lowest priced in relation to what I believe it’s worth?”

7. The only investors who shouldn’t diversify are those who are right 100 percent of the time.

8. If you are diversified among different forms of wealth, nations, and industries, you’ll be safe in the long-run.

9. Experience teaches us that one of the most common errors in selecting stocks for purchase, or for sale, is the tendency to emphasize only the most obvious factor; namely the temporary outlook for sales and profits of the company.

10. The only certainty about the future is the fact that it will be different from the past.

11. For those properly prepared in advance, a bear market in stocks is not a calamity but an opportunity.

12. An investor who has all the answers doesn’t even understand the questions.

13. Diversify. In stocks and bonds, as in much else, there is safety in numbers.

14. …success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions.

15. People are always asking me where is the outlook good, but that’s the wrong question…. The right question is: Where is the outlook the most miserable?

16. If you begin with prayer, you will think more clearly and make fewer mistakes.

John Bogle was the founder and retired CEO of the Vanguard Group. He is known for his 1999 book Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor, which became a bestseller and is considered a classic. A proponent of mutual funds for individual investors to build long term wealth, Bogle (through Vanguard) was the first to introduce low cost Index funds for individuals. Here are some famous words:

1. Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.

2. If you have trouble imaging a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.

3. When reward is at its pinnacle, risk is near at hand.

4. We now have an equity fund industry that’s [worth] $2 trillion, and if everyone wants their $2 trillion back tomorrow, they’re not going to get it.

5. Capitalism requires a structure and value system that people believe in and can depend on.

6. The scandal is not what’s illegal. It’s what’s legal.

Peter Lynch was a mutual fund manager for Fidelity Investments, famous for managing the Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990. He often was a proponent of the theory that individuals were better placed than institutions to identify good investments. He was also author of two famous books, One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street, which describe his theories and applications on investing. Here are a few famous words:

1. The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.

2. I think you have to learn that there’s a company behind every stock, and that there’s only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.

3. In this business if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten. You’re never going to be right nine times out of ten.

4. You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don’t understand that’s going to happen, then you’re not ready, you won’t do well in the markets.

5. When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I’ve bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30. You just don’t know when you can find the bottom.

6. I’ve found that when the market’s going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy. You won’t get there by reading ‘Now is the time to buy.’

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

8. The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game. And that’s always been my philosophy.

9. It’s human nature to keep doing something as long as it’s pleasurable and you can succeed at it – which is why the world population continues to double every 40 years.

10. Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.

11. Don’t bottom fish.

12. Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket… it’s part-ownership of a business.

13. If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.

14. Improved turnout will give parliament and government the appearance of being more legitimate.

15. People have been looking for recessions for the last five years.

16. People have all this data and they go through it and make up their minds in four seconds, … We’re forcing people to do the wrong things. They look at what’s hot. They spend so much time trying to figure out if the market is going up. That’s so unimportant. It’s about earnings. They need to follow the earnings.

17. It’s absolute crap that people need to spend 60 hours a week analyzing companies, … All you need are a few stocks to make money. If you find one stock a year, that’s plenty. When I was running Magellan I had to find one a week but that was because I had billions of dollars. The average person needs only a few good stocks in a lifetime.

18. I don’t go near the money and the money doesn’t go near me.

19. I spend about 15 minutes a year on economic analysis. The way you lose money in the stock market is to start off with an economic picture. I also spend 15 minutes a year on where the stock market is going.