10 Short Philip Fisher Quotes to Inspire You
- “I have already made up my mind, don’t confuse me with facts.”
2. “When profit margins of a whole industry rise because of repeated price increases, the indication is not a good one for the long-range investor.”
3. “Never promote someone who hasn’t made some bad mistakes, because if you do, you are promoting someone who has never done anything.”
4. “Companies that have failed to go uphill have invariably gone downhill.”
5. “If you can’t do a thing better than others are doing it, don’t do it at all.”
6. “Finding out which physician had lost the smallest percentage of his practice through death would not be a good way to pick a superb doctor.”
7. “I don’t want a lot of good investments; I want a few outstanding ones.”
8. “Practical investors usually learn their problem is finding enough outstanding investments, rather than choosing among too many.”
9. “Buying a company without having sufficient knowledge of it may be even more dangerous than having inadequate diversification.”
10. “In the field of common stocks, a little bit of a great many can never be more than a poor substitute for a few of the outstanding.”
10 Best Philip Arthur Fisher Quotes on Investing
11. “The successful investor is usually an individual who is inherently interested in business problems.”
12. “Don’t be afraid of buying on a war scare.”
13. “It is not the profit margins of the past but those of the future that are basically important to the investor.”
14. “If you are in the right companies, the potential rise can be so enormous that everything else is secondary.”
15. “If the growth rate is so good that in another ten years the company might well have quadrupled, is it really of such great concern whether at the moment the stock might or might not be 35% overpriced?”
16. “For the great majority of transactions, being stubborn about a tiny fractional difference in the price can prove extremely costly.”
17. “He should take extreme care to own not the most, but the best.”
18. “History has shown that in every age and in every field of human knowledge, many of the views which almost everyone accepted as true and never bothered to think about further, were in time proven completely wrong.”
19. “Conservative investors sleep well.”
20. “Be extra careful when buying into companies and industries that are the current darlings of the financial community.”
10 Wise Philip Fisher Quotes (Author of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits)
21. “Every significant price move of any individual common stock in relation to stocks as a whole occurs because of a changed appraisal of that stock by the financial community.”
22. “Long term investors best stay away from low profit-margin or marginal companies.”
23. “I had made what I believe was one of the more valuable decisions of my business life. This was to confine all efforts solely to making major gains in the long-run.”
24. “In the stock market a good nervous system is even more important than a good head.”
25. “Don’t assume that the high price at which a stock may be selling in relation to its earnings is necessarily an indication that further growth in those earnings has largely been already discounted in the price?”
26. “History has shown that in every age and in every field of human knowledge, many of the views which almost everyone accepted as true and never bothered to think about further, were in time proven completely wrong.”
27. “Go to five companies in an industry, ask each of them intelligent questions about the points of strength and weakness of the other four, and nine times out of ten a surprisingly detailed and accurate picture of all five will emerge.”
28. “If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is – almost never.”
29. “Investors have been so oversold on diversification that fear of having too many eggs in one basket has caused them to put far too little into companies they thoroughly know and far too much in others which they know nothing about.”
30. “More money has probably been lost by investors holding a stock they really did not want until they could ‘at least come out even’ than from any other single reason.”
In 1928, Philip Fisher started his career as a securities analyst at the Anglo-London Bank in San Francisco, leaving the newly established Stanford Graduate School of Business. He would subsequently return, becoming one of just three people to teach the investment course.
Prior to founding Fisher & Co., a money management firm, in 1931, he briefly transferred to a stock exchange firm. He oversaw the business’ operations until he retired in 1999 at the age of ninety-one. It is said that he generated exceptional investment returns for his clients.
Despite the fact that he began some fifty years before the term “Silicon Valley” was coined, he specialised in innovative firms fueled by research and development. He was a long-term investor who sought out exceptional companies at reasonable costs. He was a very quiet person who gave few interviews and was very picky about the clients he accepted.
He was relatively unknown to the general public until the publication of his debut book in 1958. Fisher’s fame skyrocketed at this juncture, propelling him to his now legendary status as a pioneer in the field of growth investment. He has been dubbed “one of the greatest investors of all time” by Morningstar.