Agnes Smedley Quotes

There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

The difference between playing the stock market and the horses is that one of the horses must win.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.

Banks may be considered as the primary source of "paper speculation," and only the foster the spirit of gambling in paper, in lands, in canal schemes, town lot schemes, manufacturing schemes and whatever could hit the madness of the day.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate [on the Stock Market]: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

A striking feature of financial service activities during the past few decades is that the financial transactions essential to the operation of the 'real' economy has become increasingly dwarfed by speculative activity.

Gambling is entertainment... Financial markets, what one often refers to as speculation, is really the force by which we move capital to the best and highest use.

As I have said before, the daily machinations of the stock market are like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.

Television series are like the stock market. There's room for bears and bulls but no room for pigs.

Electrical fire and the fire of greed kindle economies. In that flux, nations become digitized commodities on stock-exchange floors and on investors' rating screens. A country becomes a product to be rated for its obedience to paying of deficits and debts.

A lot of our respected financial institutions are just casinos in drag.

Speculator: One who bought stocks that went down.

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

I think without a doubt, that what is called "financial genius" is merely a rising market.

One of the evils of paper money is that it turns the whole country into stock jobbers. The precariousness of its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect. Having no real value in itself it depends for support upon accident, caprice, and party; and as it is the interest of some to depreciate and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country.

Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wall Mart Street

In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually.

When I stand on my special-issue "Intelligent Investor" ladder and peer out over the frenzied crowd, I see very few others doing the same. Many stocks remain overvalued, and speculative excess - both on the upside and on the downside - is embedded in the frenzy around stocks of all stripes. And yes, I am talking about March 2001, not March 2000.

There is something in people; you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct… I tell people investing should be dull. It shouldn't be exciting. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.

The only thing that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that's going to come crashing down.

Nobody really knows what the market is going to do, but it sure looks like we are going to have a lot more volatility.