Kirk Kerkorian Quotes

Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.

In tennis, you strike a ball just after the rebound for the fastest return. It's the same with investment.

The great skill of investment is to know when the right time is to get out. Getting in's easy.

Part of the game of investing is to come into your own. You must find some way that perfectly fits your personality because there is some element of a zero sum game in investing. If you buy, somebody else has to sell. And when you sell, somebody has to buy. You can't both be right.

Regardless of what happens in the markets, stick to your investment program. Changing your strategy at the wrong time can be the single most devastating mistake you can make as an investor.

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

But successful investors tend to be not too self-destructive. They tend to be patient, they tend not to follow the crowd, and they tend not to be too guilty about winning.

I called my business manager in California and said, 'Sell all of my stock' - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.

I have yet to take capital losses on any company. Then again, it's still early.

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.

I think that I could have been take apart if the bear market continued, but I waited three years before I felt the bear market was over and I was right.

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.

The upward move at the beginning of a bull market is almost always huge compared with the vacillations late in the bear market. If you try to pick a bottom, you will miss a good part of the action.

Ex-Fidelity mutual fund manager Peter Lynch was certainly brilliant in one respect: he knew to get out when the gettin' was good.

People often panic when the markets go down and sell off their stocks - but then they aren't in the game when the markets are doing well.

My advice to the average investor in 1988 is to be patient and think long-term. It will take 18 months for confidence to get better and, in the meantime, this is absolutely no place for short-term money.

Don't bottom fish.

I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.

But in practice, if often comes down to not suffering a loss as big as the huge gain you made a while ago.

I caught hold of the great bull market in soybeans in 1977. I had no idea what I was doing, incidentally.

Short sellers sell stock they have borrowed, hoping to buy it back later when its price has fallen.

It's easy to buy. Prove that you bought at the right time and the right price.