Many mickles make a muckle.
Hamilton’s relatively short life robbed him not only of any chance for further accomplishment but of the opportunity to mold his historical image.
Noah Webster contended that Hamilton’s “ambition, pride, and overbearing temper” had destined him “to be the evil genius of this country.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”49.
One of the very nice things about investing in the stock market is that you learn about all different aspects of the economy. It’s your window into a very large world.
Early on, New York already had a national and even international identity.
Mutual funds have historically offered safety and diversification. And they spare you the responsibility of picking individual stocks.
I’m a biographer; I can live with a little hyperbole.
That strategy of buy and hold, which is the sound and sensible one for the individual, can have very dangerous and perverse effects for the market as a whole.
You don’t want too much fear in a market, because people will be blinded to some very good buying opportunities. You don’t want too much complacency because people will be blinded to some risk.
Because of the love affair between the American public and the stock market, it is possible for entrepreneurs, technological visionaries and inventors of every sort to get financing.
After being Washington’s aide for four years and becoming the hero of Yorktown, Hamilton was viewed with a great deal of suspicion because of his association with Tories.
After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.
A crash really occurs when you suddenly have a violent downturn in the market that then heralds a long bull market.
I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don’t talk back, they don’t sue, and they don’t have angry relatives.
Washington once advised his adopted grandson that where there is no occasion for expressing an opinion, it is best to be silent. For there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.
I think those who invest in mutual funds want someone else to do the thinking for them. But the fact that they can move the money around the family of mutual funds just through a phone call lets them feel that they can play tycoons.
In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.
In the 1920s, Wall Street was a world that was really dominated by professional speculators and stock pools. These people had a monopoly over information.