The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.
In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: ‘This too will pass.’
Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.
Even the most conservative must realize that the recent transformation of surplus from an individual to a national disaster implies a scathing indictment of our capitalist system as it has now developed.
Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.
The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.
Cartels have spread and will spread as long as the world lacks an effective mechanism by which balanced expansion may be achieved without a resulting disruption of prices.
Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it’s imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.
If fees consume more than 1% of your assets annually, you should probably shop for another adviser.
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.
THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression.
The money cost of the reservoir plan literally fades into insignificance when it is compared with the financial burden which the great depression imposed on the nation.
The existence of such a war chest might go far to strengthen our prestige and frighten off any would be assailant.
If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what’s going to happen to the stock market.
Losing some money is an inevitable part of investing, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. But to be an intelligent investor, you must take responsibility for ensuring that you never lose most or all of your money.
When somebody asserts that a stock has an earning power of so much, I am sure that the person who hears him doesn’t know what he means, and there is a good chance that the man who uses it doesn’t know what it means.
Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants.
Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.
I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities.
Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.