What I Have Learned from the Market
The market is the best teacher about investment around. Unfortunately very few people are willing to learn from it.
Here are the lessons that the market has taught me over the years:
- The market is a highly efficient determiner of price, but a very inefficient gauge of value.
- A good stock can be a bad investment; but a bad stock can never be a good investment.
- A bad stock can be a great trade; but a bad equity can never be a good investment.
- A strong brand can sustain a weak company; but a weak brand can never boost a weak company.
- A strong company can sustain a weak brand; but a weak company can never help a weak brand.
- Charts are rose-colored glasses for traders and speculators they show them what they want to see – not what is happening in the market.
- Always get skeptical when a analyst pulls out a chart. He’s usually trying to distract you from something.
- There is a chart to prove every theory about the market, but there is also a chart to disprove every theory about the market.
- Gold is a commodity, not money.
- Keynes was right; the market’s ability to stay irrational will outlast your bank account.
- Conventional wisdom and popular opinion are usually dead wrong; when the market is concerned this contention is doubly correct.
- The job of journalists is to attract your attention in order to sell advertising; not to inform, or educate you.
- No amount of marketing will help a lousy product sell; but few good products succeed without effective marketing.
- Just as bad money drives out the good, hype drives out the truth.
- Even though bad money drives out the good, it is still worthless.
- Even though hype dries out the truth it is still hokum.
- Free is not necessarily good; even though a piece of shit is always free, I still do not want it.
- Never take advice on writing from somebody who does not write; or investment advice from a person with no money in the market.
- Successful people learn from their mistakes; failures hide their mistakes.
- Nothing is more dangerous in this world than a person with the resources to prove a failed strategy.
- An honest critic is worth her weight in gold. A dishonest critic is your greatest enemy.
- If you are not making mistakes, you are not making money.
- Roller coasters are fun at the amusement park, not on the charts.
- If you’re not prepared to lose money, you’re not prepared to learn.
- If you are not receiving criticism, you are not trying.
- If you are not receiving criticism nobody is paying attention.
- The only person who makes no mistakes is a dead person.
- Most investors know just enough to be dangerous.
- At the end of the day gold is nothing but a piece of shiny metal.
- Successful people understand that failure is the price you pay for success.
- Successful people tolerate failure in others, but not in themselves.
- Unsuccessful people are intolerant of failure in others, but tolerate it in themselves.
- Perfection is the most dangerous illusion of all.
- Security is nothing but an illusion, those who believe in it put themselves at risk.
- There is no such thing as financial security.
- A person who believes he or she has achieved “financial security,” is on the road to the poor house.
- When you hear the words “risk-free” or low risk mentioned in connection with an investment; get away as fast you can. You are talking to a fraudster.
- Learning what not to do is more important than learning what to do.
- Woody Allen was right; simply showing up is often the key to success.
- Patience is the key to success; most people fail or lose money because they cannot wait.
- “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” usually attributed to Mark Twain.
- The market is efficient; the human beings that operate in it are not.
- A brand is not an investment.
- A strong brand can boost a weak company, a strong company can shore up a weak brand, but a weak brand will never help a weak company.
- An idea is not an investment.
- A compelling business plan is not an investment.
- A statement of ethics is not an investment.
- Star power belongs in Hollywood, not on Wall Street.
- The poor house is full of people who think they know all the answers.
- A marketing plan is not an investment.
- A genius is just a person who happened to be correct at the right time.
- Today’s genius is yesterday’s crank, and tomorrow’s discredited charlatan.
- Rock stars belong on the stage; or the tabloids, not in the corner office.
- When you do not pay attention to Mr. Market; he whacks you in the head with a club, to remind you he is still there.
