Don’t try to time the MARKET — 15 most funny yet insightful quotes from famous investors

Time and again, legends of the investment world told us that it is next to impossible to correctly time the market on a consistent basis. Naved Abdali in his recent book, Investing — Hopes, Hypes, and Heartbreaks summarized it.

“A trader needs to be highly skilled and extremely lucky to beat the market consistently. If a trader is highly skilled but not lucky enough or extremely lucky but modestly skilled, he will beat the market occasionally but not consistently. Traders that are modestly skilled and modestly lucky will briefly beat the market but will be behind the market most of the time. Everybody else will lose money on a long-term basis, that is, 90% of the traders.” — Naved Abdali

Here are my most favorite fifteen quotes on why we should not be trying to time the market.

1. “There are only two types of people when it comes to market timing: (1) People who cannot do it, (2) People who have not realized that they cannot do it.” — Terry Smith

2. “The idea that a bell rings to signal when investors should get into or out of the stock market is simply not credible.” — John Bogle

3. “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves.” — Pater Lynch

4. “Only liars manage to always be out during bad times and in during good times.” — Bernard Baruch

5. “Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.” — Warren Buffett

6. “You don’t need to beat the market, do over-leveraging, or pick the best stock to be rich. You just need to earn a decent rate-of-return and let your money compound overtime.” — Naved Abdali

7. “We continue to make more money when snoring than when active.” — Warren Buffett

8. “Whenever some analyst seems to know what he’s talking about, remember that pigs will fly before he’ll ever release a full list of his past forecasts, including the bloopers.” — Jason Zweig

9. “Predicting a downturn is not critical. The important thing is what you do when a significant downturn happens.” — Naved Abdali

10. “The average investor’s return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.” — Daniel Kahneman

11. “I do not know of anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. I don’t even know anybody who knows anybody who has done it successfully and consistently.” — John Bogle

12. “We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.” — Warren Buffett

13. “Market timing recommendations have an impressive track record of being harmful to an investor’s financial health.”- Peter Bernstein

14. “It’s a staple of personal finance advice: Buy-and-hold, because trading the stock market is a sucker’s bet.”- Larry Swedroe

15. “The odds that you will achieve long-term success by actively trading or timing the market round to zero.”- Morgan Housel