Not J. P. Morgan — an unsourced Wall Street legendNo verified speakerCredited to J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) — the Morgan version reached print thirteen years after he died
?Attribution status: Disputed — the joke predates its Morgan version, and the first author to print that version called it legend.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
The joke is older than its Morgan version and has never been tied to Morgan himself. Quote Investigator ↗ traces the earliest known instance to the Wall Street Journal of 18 October 1922, where the reply is John D. Rockefeller’s and the subject is Standard Oil shares. The first telling to name Morgan appeared in a book of 1926, which introduced the anecdote with the words “Legend avers” and called the line an “alleged reply.”
“It will fluctuate” Not J. P. Morgan. The "it will fluctuate" joke was already in print on October 18, 1922, in the Wall Street Journal, where the reply is John D. Rockefeller's. The first telling to name Morgan is Laurence H. Sloan's Security Speculation: The Dazzling Adventure (1926), p. 17, which introduces it as legend — thirteen years after Morgan died. — Quotle.info
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to J. P. Morgan. Use the credit shown above instead.
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? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the themes of change, doubt and wisdom. Theme: "It will fluctuate". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "It will fluctuate". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the Morgan version actually comes from
Earliest known telling
Wall Street Journal, 18 October 1922 — the reply is John D. Rockefeller’s
First Morgan version
Security Speculation: The Dazzling Adventure, p. 17
Published
Laurence H. Sloan · Harper & Brothers, New York and London, 1926
Status
Unverified — Morgan died in 1913; no record of him saying it
Legend avers that an alert young man once found himself in the immediate presence of the late Mr. J. P. Morgan. Seeking to improve the golden moment, he ventured to inquire Mr. Morgan’s opinion as to the future course of the stock market. The alleged reply has become classic: “Young man, I believe the market is going to fluctuate.”
Legend, by its own admission
The first appearance of the Morgan version, from Laurence H. Sloan’s Security Speculation: The Dazzling Adventure (1926), p. 17, as transcribed from the page by Quote Investigator ↗. Note that Sloan makes no claim Morgan said it: he writes “Legend avers” and calls the words an “alleged reply.”
18 October 1922 — the Wall Street Journal prints the earliest known form. Henry Poor is said to have walked downtown with John D. Rockefeller, asked about Standard Oil shares, and been told “I think they will fluctuate” (Quote Investigator ↗). Poor had died in January 1905 ↗, so the anecdote was second-hand from the start.
1926 — Laurence H. Sloan’s Security speculation, the dazzling adventure is published by Harper in New York (Open Library ↗). It is the first book to put the line in J. P. Morgan’s mouth — thirteen years after his death — and it prefaces the anecdote with “Legend avers” (Quote Investigator ↗).
28 February 1934 — the compressed modern wording turns up in a Middletown, New York newspaper column — “I can tell you exactly what it will do for years to come… It will fluctuate” — in the same paragraph where the writer allows it may have been Jay Gould or Jesse Livermore instead (Quote Investigator ↗).
Today —Wikiquote ↗ still carries “It will fluctuate” in its main quotes section for Morgan, sourced only to Jean Strouse’s Morgan: American Financier (Random House, 1999), p. 11 — a modern biography, not a record of him speaking.
No rights status can honestly be asserted for the four-word wording: it has no identified author and no authored work behind it. The 1926 passage quoted above, from Laurence H. Sloan’s Security Speculation: The Dazzling Adventure, was published in the United States before 1931 and is out of copyright — but Sloan presents the line as legend rather than as something Morgan said, and the terse “It will fluctuate” form surfaces only in newspaper and magazine texts from 1934 onward.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
One joke, five financiers
This is a floating anecdote: the same exchange has been hung on at least five different money men, and the name changes with the decade. Quote Investigator’s chronology shows the reply passing from John D. Rockefeller to J. P. Morgan to William Rockefeller within six years of its first known appearance.
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The famous versionJ. P. Morgan No record
Morgan died on 31 March 1913 (Wikipedia ↗). The first printed telling that names him is dated 1926 and opens “Legend avers that an alert young man once found himself in the immediate presence of the late Mr. J. P. Morgan” (Quote Investigator ↗). No interview, letter, testimony or contemporary report of Morgan saying it has been produced.
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The earliest versionJohn D. Rockefeller Also unsourced
In the Wall Street Journal of 18 October 1922 and again in the Washington Post of 31 December 1924, the reply is Rockefeller’s and the subject is Standard Oil stock rather than the market at large. A Barron’s column of 1 March 1937 that printed this version already called the story “probably apocryphal” (Quote Investigator ↗).
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The 1928 almanacWilliam Rockefeller Brother swapped in
“Morrow’s Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1929” moved the scene to lower Broadway and gave the reply to John D.’s brother William: “I expect it will fluctuate” (Quote Investigator ↗).
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Everyone elseJay Gould, Jesse Livermore, an anonymous financier Interchangeable
A Middletown, New York newspaper column of 28 February 1934 offered Gould and Livermore as equally good candidates and shrugged that the choice “is of no consequence”; in 1939 Time reported Sylvia F. Porter quoting the forecast of “an anonymous financier” (Quote Investigator ↗).
✓There is no evidence J. P. Morgan ever said it. The joke was in print by October 1922 with a different speaker, and the first author to attach it to Morgan, in 1926, presented it as legend — a verdict Quote Investigator ↗ reaches too, concluding that the fable is fun and entertaining “but the supporting evidence is problematic.”
Context
Why this one refuses to die
The forecast is perfect because it is worthless. It cannot be wrong, it commits to nothing, and it makes the person delivering it sound like someone who has seen enough cycles to stop pretending. A joke shaped that well does not stay anonymous for long — it goes looking for the most famous mouth available, and in the 1920s that mouth belonged to J. P. Morgan.
The transfer left a fingerprint. In the early versions the question is about Standard Oil stock, because the man answering is John D. Rockefeller, who genuinely knew more about Standard Oil than anyone alive. Once the reply was reassigned to Morgan, who had no such inside knowledge, the question had to be widened to the stock market as a whole — the change that produced the version everybody repeats today, as Quote Investigator ↗ points out.
A joke that is always right and never useful will find a famous mouth to live in.
How the story hardened into a quotation
By mid-century the line was being sold as market wisdom rather than told as an anecdote. An advertisement for the Value Line Investment Survey in Barron’s of 30 October 1950 printed “The stock market will fluctuate”—J. P. Morgan alongside maxims credited to Baron Rothschild and Charles H. Dow. In 1955 the Secretary of the Treasury, George M. Humphrey, retold it as a full dialogue, and in 1966 Time supplied Morgan with a bristling mustache and a doubled punchline: “It will fluctuate, young man. It will fluctuate” (Quote Investigator ↗). Every retelling adds vividness; none adds a source.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1837–1913 · American financier and investment banker
John Pierpont Morgan dominated Wall Street through the Gilded Age, building J.P. Morgan & Company into the firm that financed railroads, steel and electricity, and in 1907 personally marshalled a coalition of bankers to halt a national panic. That reputation — the one man whose word moved markets — is precisely why a joke about market forecasting drifted onto him. Morgan died in 1913, and the first printed version naming him appeared thirteen years later, offered by its own author as a legend rather than a record.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented appearance
Earliest documented in “What of the Market?” Wall Street Journal, October 18, 1922, 2 — where the reply (“I think they will fluctuate”) is John D. Rockefeller’s, not J. P. Morgan’s. The first telling to name Morgan is Laurence H. Sloan, Security Speculation: The Dazzling Adventure (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1926), 17, which introduces it as legend. Citations per Quote Investigator.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It will fluctuate’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-will-fluctuate/