Taylor Larimore's market timing quotes

This article is the definitive list of Taylor Larimore's market timing quotes. The quotes have been collected from the following forum posts, merged, and edited to delete duplicates:
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Market timing quotes
There are currently 120 quotes in total.


 * 1) "It's extremely rare to hear of anyone winning at it (market timing) over a period of years. Indeed, I've never heard of such a genius." (Jack Brennan, Vanguard CEO)
 * 2) "I never have the faintest idea what the stock market is going to do in the next six months, or the next year, or the next two." (Warren Buffet)
 * 3) "Forget about timing the market, it doesn't work. You'll lose money. Invest for the long haul and then sit back and wait -- the market always goes up in the long-run." (Paul Farrell, CBS Marketwatch)
 * 4) "There will always be someone predicting disaster and someone predicting great fortune. At one time or another, each will be closer to correct than the other. But it won't matter to you if you understand this and have invested responsibly. You have a long-term plan; stick with it." (Peter Lynch)
 * 5) "The market timer's Hall of Fame is an empty room." (Jane Bryant Quinn, author, columnist)
 * 6) "Market Timing is a poor substitute for a long-term investment plan." (Jonathan Clements, Wall Street Journal)
 * 7) "Market timing is an ineffective strategy for mutual fund investors." (CDA/Wiesenberger)
 * 8) "The only way to make money with a (market timing) newsletter is by selling one." (Malcolm Forbes)
 * 9) "Nobody, but nobody, has consistently guessed the direction of the bond or stock market over any meaningful length of time." (John Markese, President, American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) Journal)
 * 10) "I've learned that market timing can ruin you." (Elaine Garzarelli, Wall Street's best known strategist until fired by Lehman Brothers)
 * 11) "Among the 160 or so newsletters the Hulbert Financial Digest monitors, the market timing recommendations of only 10 have beaten the stock market over the last decade on a risk-adjusted basis." (Mark Hulbert, January 18, 2001)
 * 12) "As you can probably sense, we're not keen on market-timing. It just doesn't work." (Morningstar's Course 106)
 * 13) "Over a 12.5 year period, 224 of 237 market timing newsletters went out of business." (indexfundsadvisors.com)
 * 14) "I'm a strong advocate of buying and holding." (Charles Schwab)
 * 15) "Buy and hold is a very dull strategy. It lacks pizzazz and doesn't inspire much admiration at cocktail parties. It has only one little advantage: It works, very profitably and very consistently." (Frank Armstrong, author)
 * 16) "For most investors the odds favor a buy-and-hold strategy." (Carol Gould, New York Times)
 * 17) "There is absolutely no evidence that anyone can time the market." (Bill Bernstein, author and advisor)
 * 18) "Some people in the popular press talk about 'getting into' a bull market and 'getting out of' a bear market, but it is all marketing hype." (Rick Ferri, author and advisor)
 * 19) "Only liars manage to always be 'out' during bad times and 'in' during good times." (Bernard Baruch)
 * 20) "It must be apparent to intelligent investors that if anyone possessed the ability to do so [forecast the immediate trend of stock prices] consistently and accurately he would become a billionaire so quickly he would not find it necessary to sell his stock market guesses to the general public." (David L. Babson, famed investor)
 * 21) "There is an overwhelming body of evidence to support the view that believing in the ability of market timers is the equivalent of believing astrologers can predict the future." (Larry Swedroe, author and advisor)
 * 22) "Don't trade in and out of funds. Stay invested. Not only does buy-and-hold investing offer better returns, but it's also less work." (Eric Tyson, author of Mutual Funds for Dummies)
 * 23) "Investors should look with a jaundiced eye at any market timing system being peddled by its guru-creator" (W. Scott Simon, author)
 * 24) "Don't waste money subscribing to investment letters or expensive services. Besides their cost, there is the problem that they are liable to tempt you into buying, and scare you into selling." (Andrew Tobias, author of The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need)
 * 25) "If you buy -- and then hold -- a total-stock-market index fund, it is mathematically certain that you will outperform the vast majority of all other investors in the long run." (Jason Zweig, Money)
 * 26) "The facts suggest that successful market timing is extraordinarily difficult to achieve." (Burton Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street)
 * 27) "If we haven't said it enough, we'll say it again: Market timing is dangerous." (Barron's Guide to Making Investment Decisions)
 * 28) "Timing the market is for losers. Time IN the market will get you to the winner's circle, and you'll sleep better at night." (Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You)
 * 29) "The stock market will fluctuate, but you can't pinpoint when it will tumble or shoot up. If you have allocated your assets properly and have sufficient emergency money, you shouldn't need to worry." (AAII Guide to Mutual Funds)
 * 30) "42% of millionaires of this country make less than one transaction per year in their investments." (Bill Schultheis, The Coffeehouse Investor)
 * 31) "I've said, 'Stay-the-course' a thousand times, and I meant it every time." (Jack Bogle, Common Sense on Mutual Funds)
 * 32) "If you become upset when one of your asset classes does poorly, even when the rest of your portfolio is doing well, then you should not be managing your own money." (Bill Bernstein, The Four Pillars of Investing)
 * 33) "What it really takes to improve your returns and diminish your risks is a willingness to stop focusing exclusively on the movement of the markets." (Baer & Ginsler, The Great Mutual Fund Trap)
 * 34) "Staying on course may be just as difficult in bull markets as in bear markets." (Good & Hermansen, Index Your Way to Investment Success)
 * 35) "Endless tinkering is unlikely to improve performance, and chasing last period's stellar achiever is a losing strategy." (Frank Armstrong, The Informed Investor)
 * 36) "Your very refusal to be active, and your renunciation of any pretended ability to predict the future, can become your most powerful weapon." (Graham & Zweig, The Intelligent Investor)
 * 37) "In a study of 66,400 Merrill Lynch investors, Professors Odean and Barber discovered that buy-and-hold investors actually beat the more active investors by a fairly sizeable margin, 18.5% to 11.4% over a six-year period." (Paul Farrell, The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing)
 * 38) "Simple buy-and-hold index investing is one of the best, most efficient ways to grow your money to the ultimate goal of financial freedom." (Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You)
 * 39) "Write down your strategy (investment plan) -- and stay-the-course." (Rick Ferri, Protecting Your Wealth in Good Times and Bad)
 * 40) "Your best strategy is to ignore the conventional wisdom and herd behavior, which is usually wrong, and simply stay-the-course with your savings and investment program." (Burton Malkiel, The Random Walk Guide to Investing)
 * 41) "If you're determined to succeed at investing, make it your first priority to become a buy-and-hold investor." (Jack Brennan, former Vanguard CEO and author of Straight Talk on Investing)
 * 42) "It's a staple of personal finance advice: Buy-and-hold, because trading the stock market is a sucker's bet." (Larry Swedroe, The Successful Investor Today)
 * 43) "Trading is based on the rather arrogant belief that the trader knows more than the buyers and sellers with whom he is trading." (Ron Ross, The Unbeatable Market)
 * 44) "Setting a goal, developing an appropriate asset allocation, and selecting a handful of funds are not hugely complex tasks. The hard part comes next: Battling your emotions so that you can stick with your plan through this and thin." (Andrew Clarke, Wealth of Experience)
 * 45) "It turns out that I should have just bought them (securities), and thereafter I should have just sat on them like a fat, stupid peasant. A peasant however, who is rich beyond his limited dreams of avarice." (Fred Schwed Jr., Where are the Customers' Yachts?)
 * 46) "Trust in time and forget market timing. Allow time to work its compounding magic for you: Let market timing inflict its miseries on someone else." (Tweddell & Pierce, Winning With Index Mutual Funds)
 * 47) "Take my word on it. Buy-and-hold is still your best long-run strategy." (Jonathan Clements, You've Lost It. Now What?)
 * 48) "If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what's going to happen to the stock market." (Benjamin Graham)
 * 49) "Stay the course. It is the most important single piece of investment wisdom I can give to you." (Jack Bogle)
 * 50) "If you are not going to stick to your chosen investment method through thick and thin, there is almost no chance of your succeeding as an investor." (Chandan Sengupta, The Only Proven Road to Investment Success)
 * 51) "Buying-and-holding a broad-based market index fund is still the only game in town." (Burton Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street)
 * 52) "Market timing recommendations have an impressive track record of being harmful to an investor's financial health." (Peter Bernstein, author, researcher)
 * 53) "Buy-and-hold will still be justified by low costs, diversification, and mean reversion." (Dr. David Blitzer, named 1998 nation's top economist)
 * 54) "There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: Those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know that they don't know." (Bill Bernstein, author and advisor)
 * 55) "I started the Boglehead Contest in January 2001. Of 99 Diehard guesses that year, only 11 even guessed the direction of the stock market. Boglehead forecasts were worse in 2008. Only 2 out of 284 Bogleheads guessed how low the S&P 500 Index would plunge. Of 11 professional forecasters, every one thought the S&P would gain; it declined 38%." (Taylor Larimore)
 * 56) "For the 12 years ending 1997, while the S&P rose 734% on a total return basis, the average return for 186 tactical asset-allocation mutual funds was a mere 384%." (Buckingham Financial Services)
 * 57) "Any investment method that relies on predicting the future is doomed to fail." (Chandan & Sengupta, financial authors)
 * 58) "A successful investor has a good knowledge base, a well-defined investment plan, and nerves of steel to stick with it." (Andrew Clarke, financial author)
 * 59) "Most investors are unable to profitably time the market and are left with equity fund returns lower than inflation." (2003 Dalber Study)
 * 60) "The buy and hold (S&P 500) equity investor would have earned a return of 8.35% for the 20 years ending 12/08, while the market-timer would have earned just 1.87%." (Dalbar research)
 * 61) "Market-timing is bunk." (Pat Dorsey, Morningstar Director of Fund Analysis)
 * 62) "The performance of 185 tactical asset allocation mutual funds was compared with buy-and-hold strategies and equity mutual funds over the years 1985-97. Over this period the S&P 500 Index increased 734%, average equity funds increased 598%, and tactical asset allocation funds increased 384%." (David Dreman, author of Contrarian Investment Strategies)
 * 63) "Market timing is a wicked idea. Don't try it -- ever." (Charles Ellis author of Winning The Loser's Game)
 * 64) "Do nothing. I think all of this market timing is statistically unfounded. I don't trust it. You may avoid a downturn, but you may also miss the rise. Choose the risk tolerance you're OK with and hold tight." (Professor Eugene Fama)
 * 65) "Forget market timing in any form." (Paul Farrell, CBS Marketwatch)
 * 66) "The best practice for investors is to design a long-term globally diversified asset allocation based on present and future financial needs. Then follow that plan religiously, through all markets good and bad." (Rick Ferri, advisor and co-author of seven books including The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning)
 * 67) "Benjamin Graham spent much of his career trying to devise a good formula for when to get into -- and out of -- the stock market. All formulas, he concluded, failed." (Forbes, December 27, 1999)
 * 68) "Buy and hold. Diversify. Put your money in index funds. Pay attention to the one thing you can control -- costs." (Fortune Investor's Guide 2003)
 * 69) "Don't sell out of fear or buy out of greed. Just keep making investments, and let the market take its course over the long-term." (Norman Fosback, author, researcher)
 * 70) "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectful." (John Kenneth Galbraith, economist)
 * 71) "From June 1980 through December 1992, 94.5% of 237 market timing investment newsletters had gone of business." (Graham/Campbell Study)
 * 72) "Those of us that live by looking in a crystal ball learn to eat a lot of broken glass." (Peter Grandich, Wall Street whiz kid)
 * 73) "The best advice: Buy and hold." (John Haslem, author and researcher)
 * 74) "From 1981 through 2006 the average top performing newsletter had a loss of -27.9% the following year." (Hulbert Financial Digest)
 * 75) "Once anomalies are discovered, the act of exploiting them will cause them to disappear." (Indexuniverse.com)
 * 76) "After receiving the Nobel Prize, Daniel Kahneman was asked by a CNBC anchorman what investment tips he had for viewers. His answer: 'Buy and hold.'"
 * 77) "No one is smart enough to time the market's ups and downs." (Arthur Levitt, former SEC chairman)
 * 78) "It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting." (Jesse Livermore, author & famed investor)
 * 79) "Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy or the stock market." (Peter Lynch)
 * 80) "Trying to anticipate any market's ups and downs can be a costly, and futile, exercise." (William McNabb, Vanguard Chairman)
 * 81) "At the peak of the bull market in March of 2000 only 0.7% of all recommendations on stocks issued by Wall Street brokerages and investment banks were to 'Sell.'" (Chuck Hill, Director of Research at FirstCall/Thomson Financial, Miami Herald, January 26, 2003)
 * 82) "If you can't handle the short term, if the uncertainty is stressful and the headlines are unbearable, then the markets are too hot for you: Get out of the kitchen." (Moshe Milevsky, author & researcher)
 * 83) "We've yet to find anyone who can accurately and consistently predict the market's short-term moves." (Motley Fool)
 * 84) "An October 2009 study found that of more than 5,000 strategies that employ technical analysis, none produced returns in the 49 countries beyond what you'd expect by chance." (New Zealand Massey University)
 * 85) "Forget trying to time the market and do something productive instead." (Gerald Perritt, financial author)
 * 86) "We have found that the fund managers who tend to perform the best over time are the ones who spend the least amount of time debating which way the market is heading." (Don Phillips, Morningstar's Managing Director)
 * 87) "Countless studies have proved that no one is able to time the market effectively." (Mary Roland, journalist and author of Best Practices for Financial Advisors)
 * 88) "In the long run it doesn't matter much whether your timing is great or lousy. What matters is that you stay invested." (Louis Rukeyser, television host)
 * 89) "Investors desperately want to believe they can time the markets, but the statistics tell a different story." (Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab Chief Investment Strategist)
 * 90) "Predicting which way the markets will head next is really a fool's errand." (Gus Sauter, Vanguard Chief Investment Officer)
 * 91) "For the 10 years that ended 12-31-2000, only one newsletter out of the 112 that Timers Digest follows managed to beat the S&P 500 Benchmark." (Jim Schmidt, editor)
 * 92) "What do I really think is going to happen? -- I have absolutely no idea." (John Schoen, senior producer, msnbc.com)
 * 93) "I have learned the hard way that market timing and trying to pick a fund that will out-perform the market are both losing strategies." (Larry Schultheis, author and advisor)
 * 94) "The forecasting skill of economists is about as good as guessing." (William Sheridan, financial author)
 * 95) "People want to know what lies ahead. I cannot tell them because I do not know." (George Soros, global financier)
 * 96) "Buying and holding a few broad market index funds is perhaps the most important move ordinary investors can make to supercharge their portfolios." (Stein & DeMuth, authors and advisors)
 * 97) "Humans can't consistently pick the right stocks or call markets." (Ben Stein, economist and author)
 * 98) "It's my belief that it's a waste of time to try to time any market decline, or try to pinpoint a market bottom." (James Stewart, Smart Money columnist)
 * 99) "People should stop chasing performance and just put together a sensible portfolio regardless of the ups and downs of the market." (David Swensen, Yale Investments)
 * 100) "Few if any investors manage to be consistently successful in timing markets." (Wall Street Journal Lifetime Guide to Money)
 * 101) "If you're considering doing your own market timing, the best advice is this: Don't." (John Waggoner, USA Today financial columnist)
 * 102) "I do not know of anybody who has done market timing successfully. I don't even know anybody who knows anybody who has done it successfully and consistently." (Jack Bogle)
 * 103) "In 2005 we interviewed more than 500 financial advisors. 83% of the advisors we polled felt that if investors had stuck to their original asset allocation plan prior to 2000, they could have cut their losses by more than half over the following few years." (Alliance Bernstein Research)
 * 104) "You have to keep reminding yourself. We don't know what's going to happen with anything, ever." (Peter Bernstein, author of 10 finance books)
 * 105) "No one can predict what the stock market will do or which mutual fund will outperform in the future. This is why we diversify -- so that whatever happens we will not have all our money in losing investments." (The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing)
 * 106) “The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good." (Warren Buffet)
 * 107) "Dalbar Research has found that both stock and bond investors tend to overreact to events, moving money in and out of mutual funds with breathtakingly bad timing." (Consumer Reports)
 * 108) "Mutual fund investors who hold on to their investments have been more successful than those who try to time the market." (Dalbar Research, 2015)
 * 109) "No one can time the market on a consistent basis." (Dick Davis, publisher of Dick Davis Digest)
 * 110) "Let's say it clearly: No one knows where the market is going -- experts or novices, soothsayers or astrologers. That's the simple truth." (Fortune)
 * 111) “When investors think short-term and try to time the market, they haven’t done very well. They have been leaving a lot of money on the table.” (Louis S. Harvey, President of Dalbar Research)
 * 112) "The odds that you will achieve long-term success by actively trading or timing the market round to zero." (Morgan Housel, Wall Street Journal and Motley Fool columnist)
 * 113) "I don’t think more than perhaps one in 100 investors will be successful using timing." (Paul Merriman, author of Investing for a Lifetime)
 * 114) "I can't point to any mutual fund anywhere in the world that's produced a superior long-term record using market timing as its main investment criteria." (Don Phillips, Managing Director of Morningstar)
 * 115) "Market-timers are circus clowns minus the funny suits. Even when they dodge the bear market, they inevitably miss the ensuing bull. Their track record is terrible." (John Rekenthaler, Vice-President of Research for Morningstar)
 * 116) "There are no geniuses on Wall Street, only geniuses for a while." (Richard Russell, editor of Dow Theory Letters)
 * 117) "The evidence is overwhelming that a thousand timers who try to buy when stocks are low, and sell when they are high, is a damnably awful record." (Paul Samuelson, Nobel Laureate)
 * 118) "Winning with stocks requires only patience, not foresight." (Jeremy Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run)
 * 119) “The important turning points in markets are never identified with precision in advance by ‘experts’ and policymakers. This lack of foresight is not surprising, because markets and the course of the economy are not modelable scientific phenomena but rather are examples of mass human behavior, which are never predictable with anything like precision. But what is surprising is that even the most sophisticated investors, traders and commentators continue to rely on predictions issued by those who have no record of success at such forecasts." (Paul Singer, hedge fund billionaire, Forbes)
 * 120) "Only two newsletters have managed to keep ahead of the market averages over the past decade (and none have done so over the past 15 years)." (Eric Tyson, author of Mutual Funds for Dummies)