Kenneth Fisher Quotes
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I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.
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Buy into good, well-researched companies and then wait. Let's call it a sit-on-your-hands investment strategy.
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Readers regularly ask what can go wrong but almost never what could positively surprise.
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In the world I've known most of my life, old stories quickly lose their power over capital markets and get replaced by new surprises. That which everyone fixates on gets priced into the stock market quickly and can't drag on.
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China's stock market is inextricably tied to politics.
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Long before folks fretted the demise of 'quantitative easing,' I fretted its existence. It proved the reverse of its image, an antistimulus, and we've done okay not because of it, but despite it.
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People do dollar cost averaging because they have regret of making one big mistake. But the fact of the matter is that, mathematically, the market rises more of the time than it falls. It falls, but it rises more of the time than it falls.
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Having different types of stocks in your portfolio can enhance returns.
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I've long loved emerging markets airlines because they usually sell at bargain prices. The troubled history of developed market airlines unfairly taints these stocks. In the emerging world, they're growth stocks.
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In a bubble, anyone who argues pessimistically is seen as crazy.
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If some stock categories get too hot-and-pricey, mass supply is created via stock offerings to tap that cheap money - and, when overdone, drives it all down.
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If you're 35, 45, or even 55 - you have a very long time horizon - 40 years or vastly more. That is you, and/or your spouse, are likely to live about that long, and you'll be investing the whole way.
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My father, Philip Fisher, was the toughest guy I ever knew. An example: He had terrible teeth, yet he got his fillings done without ever using a painkiller. Now, that's tough!
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Plenty of funds have fine long-term returns despite being tax-inefficient and generally costly. But a dirty secret is this: Average, no-load fund investors do much worse than the funds - or the market.
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All equity categories, correctly calculated, create near-identical lifelong returns. They just get there via wildly differing paths.
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Many follow a rule of thumb - no more than 5% in one stock. But that's not the entrepreneurial road to riches.
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Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds - even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it's music to Italian ears.
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You may have seen my firm's ads screaming, 'I Hate Annuities.' Folks ask why we run them. Simple: Because I do.
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Originally, I thought Republican. Now I'm an equal opportunity politician-hater.
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Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know.
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Generally, variations in earnings aren't nearly as impactful on glamour growth stocks as are changes in image and, well, sexiness. I often think of glamour stocks as though they are attractive women dressing to the nines.
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Back in the '60s and '70s, data were scarce, and while analysts knew that companies with fat gross margins lagged those with thin gross margins early in bull markets - and overachieved in the later phases - they couldn't do much about it.
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Over rolling long periods, U.S. and non-U.S. stocks tend to equalize.
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The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood.