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
In history, the evidence is overwhelming: Stock market bottoms happen, and then stocks jolt upwards while the economy keeps getting worse - sometimes by a lot and for a long time.
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.
Most investors give too much credence to the theory that prices are rational; they presume that a market collapse must have been justified by serious economic trouble.
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.
In the world I've known most of my life, old stories quickly lose their power over capital markets and get replaced by new surprises. That which everyone fixates on gets priced into the stock market quickly and can't drag on.
China frequently confounds stock market prognosticators because it has a penchant for straying markedly from other broad global indexes year-by-year over the decades - even from emerging markets. It's hit or miss.
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.
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.
Normally, the market peaks before bad news emerges. That's what happened in 1929, and that's what happened in 2000.
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.
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.
I've done well over time but made lots of mistakes, too. Learn from your mistakes.
The more you talk about investing problems, the worse you feel. Instead of complaining, it's better to do something.
Generally, variations in earnings aren't nearly as impactful on glamour growth stocks as are changes in image and, well, sexiness. I often think of glamour stocks as though they are attractive women dressing to the nines.