Fred Schwed, Jr. Quotes

“A man who borrows money to buy a common stock has no right to think of himself as a constructive social benefactor. His is just another fellow trying to be smart, or lucky, or both.”

“All of these theories are true part of the time; none of them true all of the time. They are, therefore, dangerous, though sometimes useful.”

“At the close of the day’s business, they take all the money and throw it up in the air. Everything that sticks to the ceiling belongs to the clients.”

“Before October 1929, nobody objected to short sellers except their families. The families objected to going bankrupt”

“For one thing, customers have an unfortunate habit of asking about the financial future. Now, if you do someone the single honor of asking him a difficult question, you may be assured that you will get a detailed answer. Rarely will it be the most difficult of all answers – “I don’t know.”

“he subject of choosing profitable financial investments does not lead itself to competence. There is almost no visible supply. If there were, it would have been discovered long ago.”

“History does in a vague way repeat itself, but it does it slowly and ponderously, and with an infinite number of surprising variations.”

“It seems that the immature mind has a regrettable tendency to believe, as actually true, that which it only hopes to be true.”

“Like all of life’s rich emotional experiences, the full flavor of losing important money cannot be conveyed by literature. You cannot convey to an inexperienced girl what it is truly like to be a wife and mother. There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin by words or pictures.”

“One can’t say that figures lie. But figures, as used in financial arguments, seem to have the bad habit of expressing a small part of the truth forcibly, and neglecting the other part, as do some people we know.”

“Speculation is an effort, probably unsuccessful, to turn a little money into a lot. Investment is an effort, which should be successful, to prevent a lot of money from becoming a little.”

“The burnt customer certainly prefers to believe that he has been robbed rather than that he has been a fool on the advice of fools.”

“There have always been a considerable number of pathetic people who busy themselves examining the last thousand numbers which have appeared on a roulette wheel in search of some repeating pattern. Sadly enough, they have usually found it.”

“They told me to buy this stock for my old age. It worked wonderfully. Within a week I was an old man.”

“Those classes of investments considered “best” change from period to period. The pathetic fallacy is that what are thought to be the best are in truth only the most popular – the most active, the most talked of, the most boosted, and consequently, the highest in price at that time.”

“To them having a sizable cash balance in an account for any length of time is unbearable. Suppose stocks should go way up? They would be left high and dry with nothing but some dirty money.”

“When 'conditions' are good, the forward looking investor buys. But when 'conditions' are good, stocks are high. Then without anyone having the courtesy to ring a bell, 'conditions' get bad.”