The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets.

The saying expresses a contrarian investing principle: the best opportunities often appear during moments of extreme fear, panic, or crisis, when asset prices are depressed and sellers are acting emotionally rather than rationally. “Blood in the streets” is a vivid metaphor for social turmoil—war, financial crashes, political upheaval—when public sentiment turns overwhelmingly negative. The line’s enduring appeal comes from its blunt encapsulation of buying when others are desperate to sell. However, it is frequently presented as a Rothschild maxim without reliable contemporary documentation, and it can be misread as celebrating suffering rather than describing how markets behave under stress.