Jeremy Grantham famous quotes

The individual is far better-positioned to wait patiently for the right pitch while paying no regard to what others are doing, which is almost impossible for professionals.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Waiting #Impossible #Individual

The investment business has taught me – increasingly as the years have passed – that people, especially investors (and, I believe, Americans), prefer good news and wishful thinking to bad news; and that there are always vested interests to offer facile, optimistic alternatives to the bad news.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Believe #Optimistic #Thinking

By background I'm both a Quaker and a Yorkshireman, which I like to call double jeopardy.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Quaker #Backgrounds

There is no single theory that is used in economics that considers the finite nature of resources. Its shocking.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Economics #Used #Resources

Profit margins are probably the most mean-reverting series in finance, and if profit margins do not mean-revert, then something has gone badly wrong with capitalism. If high profits do not attract competition, there is something wrong with the system and it is not functioning properly.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Mean #Competition #Gone

Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Ideas #People #Symptoms

I like to be right. I try not to miss the big ideas, forget the little ones, and try to get them right. End of job description.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Jobs #Ideas #Missing

Some societies are also more optimistic than others: the U.S. and Australia are my two picks Tell a European you think there’s a housing bubble and you’ll have a reasonable discussion. Tell an Australian and you’ll have World War III. Been there, done that!
-- Jeremy Grantham

#War #Optimistic #Thinking

Market timing, by the way, is a tag some buy-and-hold investors use to put down anything that involves using your brain. These are the same people who like to watch the locomotive coming and get run down in the name of discipline.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Running #Names #Discipline

Capitalism believes that its remit is exclusively to make maximum short-term profits.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Believe #Profit #Term

The language 'It's too late' is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Issues #People #Environmental

We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources, and we're running out of good, arable land.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Running #Land #Resources

I would say that financial markets are very inefficient, and capable of extremes of being completely dysfunctional.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Financial #Financial Markets #Extremes

The stock market is overpriced. Everything is overpriced. Junk is king.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Kings #Junk

You can't run the economy on BMWs alone. If the average person is in a pickle, how do you have a healthy economy?
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Running #Average #Bmw

Americans are just about the worst at dealing with long-term problems, down there with Uzbekistan, but they respond to a market signal better than almost anyone. They roll the dice bigger and quicker than most.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Uzbekistan #Long #Dice

I find the parallels between how some investors refuse to recognise the trends and our reaction to some of our environmental challenges very powerful. There is an unwillingness to process unpleasant data.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Powerful #Data #Challenges

I think I'm right-brained, incapable of managing my way out of a brown paper bag.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Thinking #Bags #Paper

The potential for alternative energy sources, mainly solar and wind power, to completely replace coal and gas for utility generation globally is, I think, certain. The question is only whether it takes 30 years or 70 years.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Thinking #Years #Wind

At least us old men remember what a real bear market is like, and the young men haven't got a clue.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Real #Men #Bears

Equities are boring; bonds are disgusting.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Boring #Disgusting #Equity

It is better to be lucky than good, but of course appropriate to aspire to both.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Lucky

The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Needs #World #Helping

Think how weird profit margins are: We've got high unemployment and financial crises - and world record profit margins. People think the American market is very cheap. We don't. The market quite incorrectly gives full credit to today's earnings.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Thinking #People #Giving

Remember that history always repeats itself. Every great bubble in history has broken. There are no exceptions.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Broken #Remember #Exception

If stocks are attractive and you don't buy, you don't just look like an idiot, you are an idiot.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Looks #Idiot #Attractive

Modern agriculture has been accurately described as a way of turning oil into food. As the price of oil continues to rise, so will the price of food.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Oil #Agriculture #Way

There is a lot of pain still to be had in the equity markets, particularly aimed at the risky end of the spectrum. We think the fair value on the market is about a third lower in the U.S. . .
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Pain #Thinking #Financial

Investment bubbles and high animal spirits do not materialize out of thin air. They need extremely favorable economic fundamentals together with free and easy, cheap credit, and they need it for at least two or three years. Importantly, they also need serial pleasant surprises in such critical variables as global GNP growth.
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Animal #Air #Years

Ridiculous as our market volatility might seem to an intelligent Martian, it is our reality and everyone loves to trot out the 'quote' attributed to Keynes (but never documented): 'The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent.' For us agents, he might better have said 'The market can stay irrational longer than the client can stay patient.'
-- Jeremy Grantham

#Intelligent #Reality #Agents