Fisher Investments' Founder Ken Fisher Discusses Quotes That Inspired Him

Title screen appears, “Fisher Investments' Founder Ken Fisher Discusses Quotes That Inspired Him”

A man appears on the screen Wearing A navy suit, sitting in an office in front of a fireplace.

He begins to speak.

A banner identifies him as Ken Fisher, Executive Chairmen and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Fisher Investments.

Ken Fisher: So, in times when markets get crazy, volatile, emotional verging on euphoria or panic or anything that pulls emotions into the marketplace. There's a lot to be said for listening to the wisdom system of legendary investment people. People who long ago made a big mark on investing for a long time, and sometimes people who weren't really part of investing at all but pull from life those same features which become valuable in markets.

Ken fisher pulls a lot of cards and small notes from his right pocket.

Ken Fisher: When I was a boy, my father drummed into my head read your Kipling's If poem. I don't think I could ever get over that. It's to me a fundamental thing to have in your brain for when things get wacky. I for a really long time have carried around with me in my binder clip that I keefp my credit cards and everything else in in my little pocket here there's Rudyard Kipling's If poem right there in my little pocket so that I can pull it out whenever and read it.

Screen briefly switches to a white note, showing the opening lines on the poem.

Ken Fisher: The opening lines of it if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs is one of the most important features you can do. Regards and he wasn't writing about capital markets. The fact is, over and over you get these people telling you the truth. Legendary investor, one of the most legendary of all time, sir John Templeton, who was a marvellous human being I got to know him a little bit late, very late in his life, would say the four most dangerous words in the English language are it's different this time and it's always different, but it's also never really different.

Ken Fisher: All of the features have always been done before in some other similar form that we maybe don't quite fully see. It's a great piece of wisdom from John Templeton, but there are many others. Benjamin Graham himself was a little bit of an odd duck and also, he was still around in Southern California as an old man when I was very young. Again, legendary, the father of security analysis and he would say the investor's principal problem is likely to be himself. How your investments behave is a lot less crucial than how you behave.

 That's a very hard lesson for people to learn as it comes to investments, because it's self-behaviour and self-control in times of emotion that are so critical.

Ken Fisher: Peter lynch, in a sarcastic sort of way, again a legendary investor that ran Fidelity's Magellan fund with very high returns for 13 years until he retired said the 13 years that I ran Magellan, there were nine times when the market was down 10% or more and I had a perfect record. I lagged the market every single one of those times. The fact of the matter is that being true didn't stop Peter Lynch from beating the market overall during that time and having a spectacular return. It's a point that people don't get, because going back to Ben Graham's comment, he also knew how to control himself and that those things that were going down so much at that point in time would come back that much and more when the market bounced back eventually. And he held to his convictions, and he did not let his behaviours get changed by the market behaviour. Fear is an interesting feature in that whenever we have the market do a sharp break or a sustained break, either one, the fear builds, and it motivates people into doing things that hurt themselves, selling out at the bottom before the rebound, waiting for so called clarity.

Ken Fisher: We'll talk about that in a minute. But Melody Hobson, president of Aerial America's arguably leading African American owned firm, would say that bravery is not the absence of fear, it's overcoming it. And the fact of the matter is that goes back to the Ben Graham line about it's not how your investments behave; it's how you behave. You can extend that in this way. And there's so many marvellous quotes from Warren Buffett that I'm not going to begin to ripple through them. In fact, I encourage you just to go online and look at Warren Buffett quotes.

On the screen the quote fisher is quoting appears “The Future is never clear.

You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery Consensus. Uncertainty is the Friend of the buyer of long-term values.”

Warren Buffett

Ken Fisher: But one that comes to mind is face up to two important facts the future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the market for a cheery consensus. But also, uncertainty is absolutely the friend of the long-term investor. So, you may or may not know that in the 32 and a half year that I wrote for Forbes magazine on a monthly basis portfolio strategy column, I was the longest running columnist in Forbes history, which slowly I became by outlasting people who had come before me. I will have that stature the rest of my life because they stopped running actual columnists in print, which is why I quit at the end of 2016.

Ken Fisher: But the senior columnist when I was there, who I alternated with issue to issue for years, was David dream An, who became the 7th longest running columnist in the magazine's history and was a value investor. And he would say, Fear sells newspapers, but it doesn't make money in the capital markets. In the late 19^th century, early 20thcentury, Bernard Baruch was a spectacular trader.

Ken Fisher: Later, he turned himself into a sort of a lesser political statesman. But in his prime days, he would say, the fundamental problem with the stock market is that the information always comes to us through the framework of human emotions. And everything that I've been saying to you is about the fact that in times like2022, how you handle your emotions is more actually important than how you handle your stocks. Downside creates fear, which before too long tends to be replaced with the bounce back that comes eventually. But the fear makes so many of us think it will never bounce back, or it won't be anything more than a dead decade ahead. So, I better get out. And the fact is, it is not the downturn that gets you, it's getting out before the rebound that gets you.

Ken Fisher: Finally, one of contemporary commentators that I like a lot, Michelle Singletary, likes to say that getting out, as I just described before, the rebound, after the market has fallen, and then waiting for clarity and getting back in when clarity comes, which of course is after you get to higher prices. It's a lot like waiting for the sale to be over at the department store before you go to buy that jacket that you've had your eye on for quite some time. It's a nice quote because it's apt. It's true. Stocks are one of the few things that people like them less when they are lower than they do when they're higher, whereas they should be the other way around, like them more when they've fallen, knowing that they will come back and be higher. I encourage you to look for more great quotes from investors and longtime market commentators because they provide you wisdom that will help you get through tumultuous times like 2022 has been. Thank you very much for listening to me.

Ken Fisher finished talking, and a white screen appears with a title “Fisher investment” underneath it is the red YouTube subscribe Button.

Ken Fisher: Subscribe to the Fisher investment YouTube channel. If you like what you've seen, click the bell to be notified as soon as we publish new videos.

A Series of disclosures appears on screen: “Investing is Securities involves a risk of loss. Past performance is never a guarantee of future returns. Investing in foreign stock markets involves additional risks, such as the risk of currency fluctuations. The foregoing constitutes the general views of Fisher Investments and should not be regarded as personalized investment advice or a reflection of the performance of fisher investment or its clients. Nothing herein is intended to be a recommendation or a forecast of market conditions. Rather it is intended to illustrate a point. Current and future markets may differ significantly from those illustrated here. Not all past forecasts were, nor future forecasts may be, as accurate as those predicted herein.

[Music]