I’ve long loved emerging markets airlines because they usually sell at bargain prices. The troubled history of developed market airlines unfairly taints these stocks. In the emerging world, they’re growth stocks. – Kenneth Fisher
I never liked quantitative easing. It’s misunderstood by almost everybody. Flattening the yield curve is not stimulative; flattening the yield curve is anti-stimulative. – Kenneth Fisher
If some stock categories get too hot-and-pricey, mass supply is created via stock offerings to tap that cheap money – and, when overdone, drives it all down. – Kenneth Fisher
All equity categories, correctly calculated, create near-identical lifelong returns. They just get there via wildly differing paths. – Kenneth Fisher
Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds – even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it’s music to Italian ears. – Kenneth Fisher
Indeed, bull markets are fueled by successive waves of prior skeptics finally capitulating as their fears fade. Eventually, fear turns to euphoria, and that’s the stuff of bubbles. – Kenneth Fisher
The average mutual fund holding period for equity or fixed income is only about three years. It’s too short. – Kenneth Fisher
Fundamentally cheap stocks are often held in low regard by market participants. Something may be tainting their perception in investors’ minds. – Kenneth Fisher
Normally, if you have a huge category that leads a bear market all the way down to the bottom – like tech after 2000, or energy in the ’80-’82 bear market – you get one quick pop, and then years of lag as we fight the old war. – Kenneth Fisher
The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood. – Kenneth Fisher
People do dollar cost averaging because they have regret of making one big mistake. But the fact of the matter is that, mathematically, the market rises more of the time than it falls. It falls, but it rises more of the time than it falls. – Kenneth Fisher
Despite its many critics, hydraulic fracturing will change the nature of energy production. – Kenneth Fisher
Environmentalists should like fracking for its relative cleanliness. But they don’t. They have made a bugaboo out of the chemicals in fracking fluids, which supposedly can leach into groundwater sources. I’m convinced they’re dead wrong. Ultimately, good technology with a cost advantage will win out over paranoia. – Kenneth Fisher
The more you talk about investing problems, the worse you feel. Instead of complaining, it’s better to do something. – Kenneth Fisher
Back in the ’60s and ’70s, data were scarce, and while analysts knew that companies with fat gross margins lagged those with thin gross margins early in bull markets – and overachieved in the later phases – they couldn’t do much about it. – Kenneth Fisher
In the early days, I promoted the idea of spending time in libraries to gain facts that other investors didn’t have. Not many people did that kind of research, so it worked. – Kenneth Fisher
When I was a young man in the 1970s, tech firms were scattered across the developed world. Since then, America has come to dominate tech almost totally. – Kenneth Fisher
If you’ve taken Econ 101, you know that the quantity of money rises only when the banking system makes a net loan. – Kenneth Fisher
My father, Philip Fisher, was the toughest guy I ever knew. An example: He had terrible teeth, yet he got his fillings done without ever using a painkiller. Now, that’s tough! – Kenneth Fisher
What is the most common investor mistake? Trading – getting in and getting out at all the wrong times, for all the wrong reasons. – Kenneth Fisher
If you’re 35, 45, or even 55 – you have a very long time horizon – 40 years or vastly more. That is you, and/or your spouse, are likely to live about that long, and you’ll be investing the whole way. – Kenneth Fisher
Buy into good, well-researched companies and then wait. Let’s call it a sit-on-your-hands investment strategy. – Kenneth Fisher
If you can predict where the market’s going, just do what you can predict. If you can’t, which is the presumption of dollar cost averaging or time cost averaging, either one, then you’re trying to ease in. But if the market rises more than it falls most of the time, easing in is, by definition, a loser’s game. – Kenneth Fisher
One component of the leading economic indicators is the yield curve. Bond investors keep a close eye on this, as it illustrates the spread or difference between long-term interest rates and short-term ones. – Kenneth Fisher
Investors covet past improvements but also always believe pricing unimaginable future creativity and efficiency gains is Pollyannaish. And they’re always wrong. Bet on it. – Kenneth Fisher
Plenty of funds have fine long-term returns despite being tax-inefficient and generally costly. But a dirty secret is this: Average, no-load fund investors do much worse than the funds – or the market. – Kenneth Fisher