The stock is selling at a p/e of 30, while the most optimistic projections of earnings growth are 15–20 percent for the next two years. - Peter Lynch

Ultimately it is not the stock market nor even the companies themselves that determine an investor's fate. It is the investor.

A decline in stocks is not a surprising event, it’s a recurring event — as normal as frigid air in Minnesota. If you live in a cold climate, you expect freezing temperatures, so when your outdoor thermometer drops below zero, you don’t think of this as the beginning of the next Ice Age. You put on your parka, throw salt on the walk, and remind yourself that by summertime it will be warm outside. A successful stockpicker has the same relationship with a drop in the market as a Minnesotan has with freezing weather. You know it’s coming, and you’re ready to ride it out, and when your favorite stocks go down with the rest, you jump at the chance to buy more.

In stage four, once again they’re crowded around me — but this time it’s to tell me what stocks I should buy. Even the dentist has three or four tips, and in the next few days I look up his recommendations in the newspaper and they’ve all gone up. When the neighbors tell me what to buy and then I wish I had taken their advice, it’s a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble.