Words of wisdom: Do famous investment sayings hold water?

To discover which sayings we believe stand up to scrutiny, read our full report.

At the end of the year, Warren Buffett will retire as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway after 55 years at the helm. The ‘Sage of Omaha’ is renowned for stellar investment returns and a pithy turn of phrase. Buffett may be unique in having so consistently delivered industry-beating returns, but he isn’t the only one who can coin a memorable line about the markets.

His pending retirement has prompted us to rack our brains for the dozen most commonly used aphorisms masquerading as investment advice. Anyone who has spent time thinking and talking about markets will have heard most of the below.

In no particular order, our dozen are:

Some are genuinely useful; some are downright misleading. So, in our new research paper, we look to provide some structure: scoring them all for durability, reliability and insight to give them a total score out of 15 on our (WISE) index.

• Durability: how long has this phrase been in use, and how widely is it used today?
• Reliability: how consistently useful is the implied investment advice?
• Insight: how important is the wisdom behind the words?

Over the coming months we’ll publish our findings one saying at a time, but if you’d like to see which ones top the table and which are best forgotten, read our research paper.