Favorite investment quote

[DartThrower]

"... the CMH posits a conclusion that is both trivially obvious and remarkably sweeping: The mathematical expectation of the speculator is a loss equal to the amount of transaction costs incurred."

Bogle

[Mr.BB]

“Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.” – Peter Lynch

+1

[Mr.BB]

"Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful."

[jb1]

“The first $100,000 is a b!tch but you’ve got to do it.” —Charlie Munger

As someone who is very close to this milestone, it makes me happy reading the studies behind it.

[Day9]

“The first $100,000 is a b!tch but you’ve got to do it.” —Charlie Munger

As someone who is very close to this milestone, it makes me happy reading the studies behind it.

Not to burst your bubble but with inflation since the time he said that quote it is more like $190,000 in today's dollars. However of course he did not mean to be precise about it and it was a ballpark figure to begin with.

[Jeff Albertson]

Another Munger favorite - https://twitter.com/rshotton/status/1107930688899162112

[LearningAlot]

Here are a few of my favorites:
"There are two types of investors: those who don’t know what the markets will do and those who don’t know that they do not know what the markets will do." Don't know who to attribute this to but it has always stuck with me
"If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you."- Wendy Northcutt
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door."- Paul Beatty
"If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me"- Jimmy Buffet
"Creditors have better memories than debtors."- Benjamin Franklin
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."- Unknown
"Art is anything you can get away with."- Andy Warhol
"I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."- Joe Walsh
"The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much."- Germain G. Glidden
"No pressure, no diamonds."- Mary Case
"What if this weren't a hypothetical question?"- Unknown
"I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book."- Groucho Marx
"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment." - Will Rogers
"Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there."- Josh Billings
"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left."- Oscar Levant
"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."- Victor Borge

"Humor is also a way of saying something serious."- T. S. Eliot

[Jeff Albertson]

Here are a few of my favorites:
"There are two types of investors: those who don’t know what the markets will do and those who don’t know that they do not know what the markets will do." Don't know who to attribute this to but it has always stuck with me

https://www.azquotes.com/author/52370-W ... _Bernstein

[goingup]

I've read so many great quotes on this forum over the years. One that is resonates with me right now, as we are on the cusp of retirement:

"I have a simple solution which has worked for me: Money I cannot afford to lose is in safe-fixed income -- the rest is in stock mutual funds." - Taylor Larimore

[Teague]

I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant
-Alan Greenspan

[trueson1]

Robert Kiyosaki - "Always pay yourself first".

[Sic Vis Pacem]

This one stuck with me for some reason. I just love the analogy. From Forum member Steadfast:

"My portfolio is a beast of its own. It does its thing, I do mine. I can make or lose many thousands of dollars in a day, depending on what the market does. My contributions are mostly meaningless. The beast grinds on. It grows, throws tantrums, shrinks, explodes, sulks, takes off, whatever. In the long run, it has grown bigger and faster than I could have imagined. I just kept feeding it. Now it feeds itself, too.

Keep feeding the beast. Feed it whatever you got, and let it do its thing. Every bite counts.

One day you'll have to stop feeding it, and start eating it. You want to make sure there's enough there, and maybe even some leftovers to share."

[272 Sheep]

In a really bad market (2008), I had to remind myself of this one:

"...it is the duty of shareholders to periodically suffer loss without complaint".
John Maynard Keynes
From "The Four Pillars of Investing" by William Bernstein pg. 107)

[lhl12]

Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours; it never has short crops nor droughts; it never pays taxes; it buys no food; it wears no clothes; it is unhoused and without home and so has no repairs, no replacements, no shingling, plumbing, painting, or whitewashing; it has neither wife, children, father, mother, nor kinfolk to watch over and care for; it has no expense of living; it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

- J. Reuben Clark

[corn18]

Some that I use a lot:

You don't have to be right, just don't be wrong.

The stupid shall be punished (my first Commanding Officer in a fleet squadron)

In God we trust, all others bring data.

Hope is not a strategy.

[Abe]

Someone told me this one time:

"You've got to get something working for you besides yourself."

[FrankLUSMC]

"that's enough for me 2019" Market Timer

[Day9]

Combine these two quotes together:

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” ― Benjamin Graham

“I’ve learned that, while financial economists understand that even 10 or 20 years of investment performance can be nothing more than “noise,” the vast majority of investors believe three years is a long time, five years is a really long time and 10 years is an eternity.” ― Larry Swedroe

[FrankLUSMC]

This one stuck with me for some reason. I just love the analogy. From Forum member Steadfast:

"My portfolio is a beast of its own. It does its thing, I do mine. I can make or lose many thousands of dollars in a day, depending on what the market does. My contributions are mostly meaningless. The beast grinds on. It grows, throws tantrums, shrinks, explodes, sulks, takes off, whatever. In the long run, it has grown bigger and faster than I could have imagined. I just kept feeding it. Now it feeds itself, too.

Keep feeding the beast. Feed it whatever you got, and let it do its thing. Every bite counts.

One day you'll have to stop feeding it, and start eating it. You want to make sure there's enough there, and maybe even some leftovers to share."

I like it!

[Toons]

This Too Shall Pass

[Nowizard]

"Sometimes I make the most by losing the least." This one sustains me when the market is going down but confidence remains in the way our investments are diversified. It was helpful in 2008 for sure.

Tim

[2015]

Not a quote, but my favorite anecdote to an All-Knowing, Overconfident Boglehead (and to financial writers of all kinds):

"Never Saw It Coming: Why the Financial Crisis Took Economists By Surprise", by [doesn't know when to quit] Greenspan

[Jeff Albertson]

From Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market, by James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett.

Glassman and Hassett had predicted that the,

single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap....If you are worried about missing the market's big move upward, you will discover that it is not too late. Stocks are now in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average.
— Glassman and Hassett. 1999. "Introduction." Dow 36,000

The book was published in 1999, shortly before the dot-com bubble burst, and predicted that stocks would rise quickly to 36,000. Although the DJIA reached a record high of 11,750.28 in January 2000, it fell steadily after the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Following the September 11 attacks of 2001, the DJIA fell further, reaching a low of 7,286.27 in October 2002. Although the DJIA recovered to a new record high of 14,164.53 in October 2007, it crashed back to the vicinity of 6,500 by the early months of 2009, amidst a global recession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_36%2C000
FWIW, Hassett is the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

[1claire]

"It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for."
- Robert Kiyosaki