Be fearful when others are greedy
Meaning: Excessive optimism in markets creates dangerous bubbles; prudent investors withdraw when irrational exuberance peaks.
Origin: From the investor Warren Buffett, who wrote in his 1986 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders: "we simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful." He repeated it in a 2008 New York Times opinion piece, at the depth of the financial crisis.
More proverbs about Challenge
- Danger past, God forgotten — When crisis ends, people abandon the gratitude and piety that desperation inspired.
- You can't fight City Hall — Entrenched bureaucratic power overwhelms individual resistance; institutional forces outm…
- Who hath aching teeth, hath ill tenants. — Persistent pains are like bad tenants — troublesome, unwelcome, and hard to evict.
- Adversity makes a man wise, not rich. — Hardship teaches wisdom even when it never fills your pockets.
- In vain he craves advice who will not follow it. — Asking for advice is pointless if you never intend to heed it.
- He that's afraid of wounds must not come nigh a battle. — If you fear getting hurt, stay out of the fight — risk is action's price.
From our untranslatable words
- Shemomechama — Eating well past fullness simply because the food is too delicious to stop.
- Prozvonit — To call someone's phone and hang up after one ring, so they call you back and you save th…
- Boketto — Staring off into the distance with your mind pleasantly empty, thinking of nothing at all.