Quotes from Peter Lynch

- You can make a lot of money from the stock market, but then again you can also lose money, as we proved.

- You can lose money in a very short time but it takes a long time to make money.

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

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

- You have to research the company before you put your money into it.

- Hold no more stocks than you can remained informed on.

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

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

- Once you've bought a stock, presumably you've learned something about the industry and the company's place within it, how it behaves in recessions, what factors affect the earnings, etc. Inevitably, some gloomy scenario will cause a general retreat in the stock market, your old favorites will once again become bargains, and you can add to your investment.

- If you like the store, chance are you'll like the stock.

- As long as the same-store sales are on the increase, the company is not crippled by excessive debt, and it is following its expansion plans as described in its reports, it usually pays to stick with the stock.

- I always ended these discussions by asking: which of your competitors do you respect the most?

- 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.

- 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.

- A good company usually increases its dividend every year.

- Buying stocks in utility company is good because it gives you a higher dividend, but you'll make money in growth stocks.

- The dividend is such an important factor in the success of many stocks that you could hardly go wrong by making an entire portfolio of companies that have raised their dividends for 10 or 20 years in a row.

- When yields on long-term government bonds exceed the dividend yield of the S&P 500 by 6 percent or more, sell your stocks and buy bonds.

- Buy or do not buy the stock on the basis of whether or not growth meets your objectives and whether the price is reasonable.

- Over the last seventy years the market has declined forty times, so an investor has to be willing to be in the market for the long term.

- You want to see, first, that sales and earnings per share are moving forward at an acceptable rate and, second, that you can buy the stock at a reasonable price.

- The stock market really isn't a gamble, as long as you pick good companies that you think will do well, and not just because of the stock price.

- When you invest in the stock market you should always diversify.

- Never fall in love with a stock; always have an open mind.

- Just because a stock goes down doesn't mean it can't go lower.

- Over the long term, it's better to buy stocks in small companies.

- It is well to consider the financial strength and debt structure to see if a few bad years would hinder the company's long-term progress.

- I always look for banks that have a strong local deposit base, and are efficient and careful commercial lenders.

- You've got to go into places where other investors and especially fund managers fear to tread, or, more to the point, to invest. As 1991 came to a close, the most fearsome places were all connected to housing and real estate.

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

- I was attracted to fast-food restaurants because they were so easy to understand. A restaurant chain that succeeded in one region had an excellent chance of duplicating its success in another.

- 90 seconds is plenty of time to tell the story of a stock. If you're prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so that fifth grader won't get bored.

- It's important to get out of a cyclical at the right time. Chrysler is an example of how quickly things can go from good to worse. The company earned $4.66 a share in 1988 and people were looking for another $4 in 1989. Instead, Chrysler earned $1 and change in 1989, 30 cents in 1990, and in 1991 it lost a bundle and fell into the red.

-It seemed to me that we were far into the economic recovery and that people who were going to buy new cars had done so, and the analysts who followed the autos were making optimistic earnings projections that my research told me were unsupportable.

- The bond market is dominated by conservative investors who keep rather close tabs on a company's ability to repay the principal. Since bonds come before stocks in the lineup of claimants on the company's assets, you can be sure that when bonds sell for next to nothing, the stock will be worth even less. Here's a tip from experience: before you invest in a low-priced stock in a shaky company, look at what's been happening to the price of the bonds.

- The very homogeneity of taste in food and fashion that makes for a dull culture also makes fortunes for owners of retail companies and of restaurant companies as well. What sells in one town is almost guaranteed to sell in another.

- In double-decker malls, the most popular retailers are usually found upstairs.

- The price of the median house is only one of the many quiet facts that can be a great source of strength and consolation for investors willing to explore the scariest areas of the market. Other useful quiet facts are the "affordability index" from the National Association of Home Builders and the percentage of mortgage loans in default.

- 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. (This technique isn't foolproof. In the oil and gas drilling industries, people were saying things couldn't get any worse in 1984, and they've been getting worse ever since. It's senseless to invest in a downtrodden enterprise unless the quiet facts tell you that conditions will improve.)

- You can imagine my excitement at finding a company with very little debt and enough new orders to keep it busy for two years, its competitors dropping by the wayside, and its stock selling for one fifth its 1991 high.