Bernard Baruch Quotes

Not even the "safest" investment is without some risk and some element of speculation.

There are two principal mistakes that nearly all amateurs in the stock market make. The first is to have an inexact knowledge of the securities in which one is dealing, to know too little about a company's management, its earnings, and prospects for future growth. The second mistake is to trade beyond one's financial resources, to try to run up a fortune on a shoestring.

One could say that my whole career in Wall Street proved one long process of education in human nature.

The strange fascination that the stock market exerts upon people has never ceased being a source of wonder to me.

I think economists as rule...take for granted they know a lot of things. If they really knew so much, they would have all the money and we would have none.

We must remember that delusions swing between extremes, like pendulums. Delusions of grandeur and unending wealth give place to delusions of unending gloom. One is as unreal as the other.

Whether stocks rise or fall is determined by innumerable forces and elements, by economic conditions, the actions of governments, the state of international affairs, the emotions of people -- even the vagaries of the weather.

People invest in stocks for two opposite reasons -- in hope and confidence in the future of an enterprise or in fear that the value of their capital will be lost through inflation.

The stock market registers the judgments of multitudes of buyers and sellers about the many factors which affect business -- what business is like today; what it will be like in the future.

The impression has built up that the stock market is the cause of booms and busts. Actually, it is the thermometer -- not the fever.

No one, not even the most experienced trader, economist or businessman can predict with certainty the course of the stock market.