Peter Lynch Years Quotations

It's human nature to keep doing something as long as it's pleasurable and you can succeed at it, which is why the world population continues to double every 40 years.

The typical big winner in the Lynch portfolio generally takes three to ten years to play out.

The S&P is up 343.8 percent for 10 years. That is a four-bagger. The general equity funds are up 283 percent. So it's getting worse, the deterioration by professionals is getting worse. The public would be better off in an index fund.

Often, there is no correlation between the success of a company's operations and the success of its stock over a few months or even a few years. In the long term, there is a 100 percent correlation between the success of the company and the success of its stock. This disparity is the key to making money; it pays to be patient, and to own successful companies.

Absent a lot of surprises, stocks are relatively predictable over twenty years. As to whether they're going to be higher or lower in two to three years, you might as well flip a coin to decide.

I spend about fifteen minutes a year on economic analysis.

If you can find a company that can get away with raising prices year after year without losing customers (an addictive product such as cigarettes fills the bill), you've got a terrific investment.

The Rule of 72 is useful in determining how fast money will grow. Take the annual return from any investment, expressed as a percentage, and divide it into 72. The result is the number of years it will take to double your money.

I talk to hundreds of companies a year and spend hour after hour in heady pow-wows with CEOs, financial analysts and my colleagues in the mutual-fund business, but I stumble onto the big winners in extracurricular situations, the same way you do.

The biggest winners are surprises to me, and takeovers are even more surprising. It takes years, not months, to produce big results.