Kenneth Fisher
Kenneth Fisher
Kenneth Lawrence Fisheris an American investment analyst and the founder and chairman of Fisher Investments, a money management firm with offices in Woodside, California, San Mateo, California, and Camas, Washington. Fisher writes a monthly column in Forbes magazine, contributes to other financial and news magazines, has written eleven books, and has written research papers in the field of behavioral finance. He is on the 2014 Forbes 400 list of richest Americans and Forbes list of world billionaires, and as of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth29 November 1950
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
I can find only one bull market, in 1935, that didn't have some material indigestion within its first 12 months.
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.
The stock market is a discounter of all known information.
What is the most common investor mistake? Trading - getting in and getting out at all the wrong times, for all the wrong reasons.
If you've taken Econ 101, you know that the quantity of money rises only when the banking system makes a net loan.
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.
The average mutual fund holding period for equity or fixed income is only about three years. It's too short.
When the economies of emerging markets don't just grow but beat expectations, there's scarcely a mention.
I'm sometimes accused of being hostile to mutual funds. That's not fair, really. There is a place for them. Still, I am hostile to one thing, which is trying to use funds to time your way in and out of the market. That's a recipe for very bad results.
Long before folks fretted the demise of 'quantitative easing,' I fretted its existence. It proved the reverse of its image, an antistimulus, and we've done okay not because of it, but despite it.
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.
Windmills and solar cells are carbon-free sources of electricity. But they are costly. If you've been investing in those, give it up. That game is effectively over.