The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.’
Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.
Love the Lynch quotes. Here’s my favorite, from page 246 of One Up On Wall Street:
“If you can’t convince yourself, ‘When I’m down 25 percent, I’m a buyer’ and banish forever the fatal thought ‘When I’m down 25 percent, I’m a seller,’ then you’ll never make a decent profit in stocks.”
By: Dan Ferris on November 8, 2008
at 3:23 am