50+ Best Peter Lynch Quotes to Empower Your Finances

Peter Lynch is a legendary investor. He managed Fidelity’s Magellan Fund for 13 years. Take your finances to the next level with Peter Lynch quotes.

Peter Lynch is one of the most successful and best-known investors.

Lynch was the manager of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund for 13 years.

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He generated annualized returns of 29% and grew the assets under management from $18 million to $14 billion (Source: Business Insider).

His success allowed him to retire at 46 years old. Throughout the years, Lynch has shared tips to help other investors.

The following are the best Peter Lynch quotes to empower your investing and financial education.

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The top Peter Lynch quotes

1. “In the stock market, the most important organ is the stomach. It’s not the brain.” -Peter Lynch

2. “Most people do really well because they just hang in there.” -Peter Lynch

3. “There will still be declines. It might be tomorrow. It might be a year from now. Who knows when it’s going to happen? The question is: Are you ready? Do you have the stomach for this?” -Peter Lynch

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4. “Trying to predict market highs and lows is not productive.” -Peter Lynch

5. “Stocks aren’t lottery tickets. Behind every stock is a company. If the company does well, over time the stocks do well, and vice versa.” -Peter Lynch

6. “You have to define when a company is getting close to maturity, and that’s when you exit. Or the story deteriorates. If the story’s intact, you hold on.” -Peter Lynch

7. “So you have flops. Maybe you’re right 5 or 6 times out of 10. But if your winners go up 4- or 10- or 20-fold, it makes up for the ones where you lost 50%, 75%, or 100%.” -Peter Lynch

8. “You only need a few good stocks in your lifetime.” -Peter Lynch

9. “I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of ’em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result.” -Peter Lynch

10. “You have to let the big ones make up for your mistakes.” -Peter Lynch

11. “That’s the most single important thing people have to do, they have to save some more.” -Peter Lynch

12. “The trick is not to learn to trust your gut feelings, but rather to discipline yourself to ignore them. Stand by your stocks as long as the fundamental story of the company hasn’t changed.” -Peter Lynch

13. “Go for a business that any idiot can run because sooner or later any idiot probably is going to be running it.” -Peter Lynch

14. “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.” -Peter Lynch

15. “People who succeed in the stock market also accept periodic losses, setbacks, and unexpected occurrences. Calamitous drops do not scare them out of the game.” -Peter Lynch

16. “Big companies have small moves, small companies have big moves.” -Peter Lynch

17. “Don’t bottom fish.” -Peter Lynch

18. “The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.” -Peter Lynch

19. “When you sell in desperation, you always sell cheap.” -Peter Lynch

20. “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.'” -Peter Lynch

21. “Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket. It’s part-ownership of a business.” -Peter Lynch

22. “When purchasing depressed stocks in troubled companies, seek out the ones with the superior financial positions and avoid the ones with loads of bank debt.” -Peter Lynch

23. “Moderately fast growers (20 to 25 percent) in non-growth industries are ideal investments.” -Peter Lynch

24. “Managerial ability may be important, but it’s quite difficult to assess. Base your purchases on the company’s prospects, not on the president’s resume or speaking ability.” -Peter Lynch

25. “Carefully consider the price-earnings ratio. If the stock is grossly overpriced, even if everything else goes right, you won’t make any money.” -Peter Lynch

26. “Look for companies that consistently buy back their own shares.” -Peter Lynch

27. “Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.” -Peter Lynch

28. “Investing in stocks is an art, not a science, and people who’ve been trained to rigidly quantify everything have a big disadvantage.” -Peter Lynch

29. “That’s not to say there’s no such thing as an overvalued market, but there’s no point worrying about it.” -Peter Lynch

30. “As I look back on it now, it’s obvious that studying history and philosophy was much better preparation for the stock market than, say, studying statistics.” -Peter Lynch

31. “You have to say to yourself, “If I’m right, how much am I going to make? If I’m wrong, how much am I going to lose?” That’s the risk to reward ratio.” -Peter Lynch

32. “When the neighbors tell me what to buy and then I wish I had taken their advice, it’s a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble.” -Peter Lynch

33. “This is one of the keys to successful investing. Focus on the companies, not on the stocks.” -Peter Lynch

34. “Avoid hot stocks in hot industries.” -Peter Lynch

35. “Separate all stock tips from the tipper, even if the tipper is very smart, very rich, and his or her last tip went up.” -Peter Lynch

36. “Invest in simple companies that appear dull, mundane, out of favor, and haven’t caught the fancy of Wall Street.” -Peter Lynch

37. “A technique that works repeatedly is to wait until the prevailing opinion about a certain industry is that things have gone from bad to worse, and then buy shares in the strongest companies in the group.” -Peter Lynch

38. “Most individual investors would be better off in an index mutual fund.” -Peter Lynch

39. “It’s better to miss the first move in a stock and wait to see if a company’s plans are working out.” -Peter Lynch

40. “The natural-born investor is a myth.” -Peter Lynch

41. “Time is on your side when you own shares of superior companies.” -Peter Lynch

42. “Look for companies with niches.” -Peter Lynch

43. “Whenever you invest in any company, you’re looking for its market cap to rise. This can’t happen unless buyers are paying higher prices for the shares, making your investment more valuable.” -Peter Lynch

44. “Know what you own, and know why you own it.” -Peter Lynch

45. “They should buy, hold, and when the market goes down, add to it.” -Peter Lynch

46. “People spend an unbelievable amount of mental energy trying to pick what the market’s going to do, what time of the year to buy it. It’s just not worth it.” -Peter Lynch

47. “You should worry what are stocks going to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now.” -Peter Lynch

48. “If I could beat the market by three or four percent a year I’m really doing a service to the public.” -Peter Lynch

49. “I mean I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That’s crystal ball stuff. That doesn’t work. Futile.” -Peter Lynch

50. “I concentrate on fundamentals. I call up companies. I look at their balance sheet. I look at their business. I look at the environment.” -Peter Lynch

51. “The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game. And that’s always been my philosophy.” -Peter Lynch

52. “The important thing is not the fact that the stock went from $3 to $6. Why did it go up? What happened to the story? That’s what research is about. Did the company’s fundamentals get better?” -Peter Lynch

53. “Long term, the stock market’s a very good place to be.” -Peter Lynch

54. “Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards.” -Peter Lynch

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Featured image courtesy of Fidelity.