An Annotated Collection of Stock-Market Sayings
Posted: July 28, 2026
July 20, 2026 — (Maple Hill Syndicate) – Some famous stock market sayings, with a little gloss.
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. – Warren Buffett.
In the midst of the Great Recession of October 2007 to March 2009, Buffett published an op-ed piece in the New York Times. “Fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors,” he wrote. “But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense.”
The essay was called, “Buy American. I Am.”
Conversely, Buffett warned of market excess in 1999, at the height of the dot.com boom. The stock of his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A), suffered for it. But a three-year bear market started in March 2000.
In my opinion, most investors today are greedy, and wise investors should be cautious. Berkshire Hathaway, where Buffett recently retired as CEO, is holding a cash hoard of about $58 billion.
Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate correction, than lost in the corrections themselves. – Peter Lynch.
I’ve been guilty on this one. In my 26-year career as an investment manager, I’ve raised cash to more than 10% of my clients’ portfolios four times. The most recent was when President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. My decision backfired, as the market rallied after a short drop.
The only time I was clearly right to get defensive was in the early days of the Great Recession.
You need to do two things to be successful in stock investing. You have to have a view different from the majority, and you have to be right. – Michael Steinhardt
Either half of Steinhardt’s equation is not too difficult. It’s getting both parts that’s hard. To me, one lesson is not to be making dozens of bets, but to pick your spots.
The idea that a bell rings to signal when to get into or out of the stock market is simply not credible. After nearly fifty years in this business, I don’t know anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. – Jack Bogle
Yes, market timing is a chimera wrapped in a miasma wrapped in an unsolvable riddle.
In the short run, the market is a voting machine. In the long run it is a weighing machine. – Benjamin Graham
In other words, stock prices eventually follow profits. But in the short run, sentiment-driven trading can produce irrational run-ups in hot groups.
In the early 2000s, investors piled into dot.com stocks that (unlike today’s tech giants) had no earnings. In some cases, they valued the stocks based on the number of clicks their web sites generated.
There have been fads for auto stocks, radio stocks, bowling stocks, oil stocks, the Nifty Fifty in the 1970s and the Magnificent Seven in the past two years. In some cases, the companies did well but the stocks faded. In some cases, the companies disappeared.
It is not a case of choosing those faces that, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. – Lord John Maynard Keynes
I disagree a bit with Lord Keynes. If you try to predict what stocks the crowd will love, you have two chances to lose. You could predict wrong. Or you could predict right, and the crowd could be wrong.
October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February. – Mark Twain
Twain knew this from personal experience. He lost a fortune in the stock market. Luckily, he made enough from his books and speaking engagements to live a pretty rich lifestyle for much of his life.
It will fluctuate. – J.P. Morgan
This is what the great financier J.P. Morgan (allegedly) said when asked what the stock market will do. Since the quote first appeared years after his death, we’re not sure if he really said it. But the wry sense of humor does seem authentic.
Buy on the sound of cannons. Sell on the sound of trumpets. – Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild
Here again, we’re not sure whether the baron really made this remark, widely attributed to him. But there’s great wisdom in it. On reflection, it’s really the same advice as in the Warren Buffett quotation above.
Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it. – Will Rogers
Enough said.
John Dorfman is chairman of Dorfman Value Investments LLC in Boston, and a syndicated columnist. His firm or clients may own or trade securities discussed in this column. He can be reached at jdorfman@dorfmanvalue.com.