All the investing advice you ever need

Everyone is always looking for investing advice (whether they follow it or not is another issue). Here are some assorted quips which should leave you wiser. Don't take it too personally if what you respect is being ridiculed. Even if they are just witty sound bites to you, there is no denying the quality of the vitriol and the art with which it is thrown. So enjoy & smarten up!

On where to invest....

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

- Peter Lynch, asset manager & author

Never invest in anything that eats or needs repainting.
- Billy Rose, American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist

On how to invest....

Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can't be done except by liars. 

- Bernard Baruch, American stock investor, financier and statesman

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, American vaudeville actor & humorist

On relying on the brains of the intelligent on Wall Street...

Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.
- Peter Lynch, asset manager & author

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
- Warren Buffett, American investor & philanthropist

There are two kinds of investors: those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know that they don't know. Then again, there is a third type of investor -the investment professional, who indeed knows that he or she doesn't know, but whose livelihood depends upon appearing to know.

- William Bernstein, American financial theorist

On crappy predictions & tips from the experts....

Every day, self-proclaimed stock market "experts" tell us why the market just went up or down, as if they really knew. So where were they yesterday?

- Anonymous

If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.
- Norman R Augustine, American aerospace businessman & ex-Under Secretary of the US Army

The stock market has forecast nine of the last five recessions.

- Paul A Samuelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Economics

When asked what the stock market will do, J P Morgan once replied: "It will fluctuate."

On the respectable stock market & stock brokers....

With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stock broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.
- Oscar Wilde, Irish writer & poet

The United States have developed a new weapon that destroys people but it leaves buildings standing. It's called the stock market.

- Jay Leno, American stand-up comedian & television host

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

- Warren Buffett, American investor & philanthropist

Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered. 

- Anonymous 

Ever wonder why fund managers can't beat the S&P 500? 'Cause they're sheep, and sheep get slaughtered. 

- Gordon Gekko (character played by Michael Douglas) in the movie Wall Street

On buying & selling......
If you hear that everybody is buying a certain stock, ask who is selling. 

- James Dines, investor & author 

One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute.

- William Feather, American publisher & author

I made my money by selling too soon. 

- Bernard Baruch, American financier & investor  

If I have missed some good ones, send them across........