BY WARREN BOROSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The greatest investors – people like Warren Buffett, Bernard Baruch, and Peter Lynch – also tend to have made immortal observations about investing in general. Here are some of my own favorites:

1. The stock market will always do whatever makes the greatest number of people look foolish.

2. A stockbroker says: I made money, my brokerage firm made money. Two out of three ain’t bad!

3. Stockbrokers service their clients the way Bonnie and Clyde serviced banks. - William Bernstein, M.D.

4. Explanations of why the stock market went up or down yesterday belong on the funny pages. - a Harvard economist

5. In the stock market, water does not always boil at 100 degrees centigrade.

6. Investors tend to water their weeds and cut down their flowers. - Peter Lynch

7. When the tide goes out, you can tell who has been swimming naked. - Warren Buffett

8. The first rule of investing is: Don’t lose money. The second rule is: Don’t forget the first rule. - Benjamin Graham

9. The only people who buy at the lows and sell at the highs are…liars. - Bernard Baruch

10. A stockbroker can make you a small fortune…provided you started out with a large fortune.

11. The only thing my stockbroker did for me was make me broker. - Andrew Tobias

12. I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will. - Peter Lynch

13. Don’t confuse genius with a bull market. - Warren Buffett

14. There are two types of people in the world: those who don’t know where interest rates are going, and those who don’t KNOW that they don’t know where interest rates are going.

15. About male investors: Do you know why it takes 10,000 sperm to fertilize one egg? None of them will stop to ask for directions.

16. A bargain that remains a bargain was no bargain. - Martin A. Whitman

17. Given a choice between being overdiversified and being underdiversified, be overdiversified. It’s better to get a C than an F. - Warren Boroson

18. Don’t buy everything. There’s such a thing as di-worsification. - Peter Lynch

19. Nothing gives you more confidence when you invest in stocks than having $500,000 in Treasury bills. - Bill Ruane

20. The four most dangerous words in investing are: This time, it’s different. - Sir John Templeton

21. One trouble with losing money in the stock market is that, to regain what you’ve lost, you must do much better. Because you’re dealing with a smaller number. If your portfolio goes from $100,000 to $50,000, it’s a 50% loss. But you now must make a 100% gain to get back to $100,000.

22. When they arrest the girls, they also arrest the madame. (When not-so-good stocks go down, they tend to take good stocks with them.)