Required: Stomach

Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach. If you are susceptible to selling everything in a panic, you ought to avoid stocks and stock mutual funds altogether.

- Peter Lynch

Don't pick a stock

You shouldn't just pick a stock - you should do your homework.

- Peter Lynch

Few winners would do

All you need for a lifetime of successful investing is a few big winners, and the pluses from those will overwhelm the minuses from the stocks that don't work out.

- Peter Lynch

Shameful

There is no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock or worse to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating.

- Peter Lynch

It is not a simple formula

Stock picking can't be reduced to a simple formula or a recipe that guarantees success if strictly adhered to.

- Peter Lynch

Wall Street way

There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.

- Peter Lynch

Why companies are valuable

What makes a company valuable, and why it will be more valuable tomorrow than it is today... earnings and assets.

- Peter Lynch

It is an art, not a science

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. Investing in stocks is an art, not a science, and people who've been trained to rigidly quantify everything have a big disadvantage. If stockpicking could be quantified, you could rent time on the nearest Cray computer and make a fortune. But it doesn't work that way. All the math you need in the stock market you get in the fourth grade.

- Peter Lynch

You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

In this business (investing) if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

- Peter Lynch

In investing, always mistakes are going to happen. This happens because there are always some variables as the investor is looking for the future which is always uncertain and there could be surprises and mistakes which the investor may have not factored in. As the objective is to minimise the mistakes and maximise the profits, doing the proper spade work before investing delivers the results.

Portfolio

Owning stocks is like having children - don't get involved with more than you can handle.

- Peter Lynch

The best stock to buy

The best stock to buy may be the one you already own.

- Peter Lynch

Past doesn't always tell the future

You can't see the future through a rear view mirror.

- Peter Lynch

Don't buy because it's cheap

You should not buy a stock because it's cheap but because you know a lot about it.

- Peter Lynch

Illustrate

Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon.

- Peter Lynch

Buy troubled companies with ...

When purchasing depressed stock in troubled companies, seek out the ones with the superior financial positions and avoid the ones with loads of bank debt.

- Peter Lynch

The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.

- Peter Lynch

Research a stock

Invest at least as much time and effort in choosing a new stock as you would in choosing a new refrigerator.

- Peter Lynch

Learn that there is company behind every stock

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.

- Peter Lynch

On stock bargains which are plentiful now.

You feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony.

- Peter Lynch

Corporate Office

The extravagance of any corporate office is directly proportional to management's reluctance to reward the shareholders.

- Peter Lynch