Bernard Baruch Quotes

A second reason why science cannot replace judgement is the behavior of financial markets.

A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.

You'd rather own gold; never own the miner.

If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change.

Shaking the confidence in the American economy. This will lead investors to refrain from investing in America or participating in American companies, thus accelerating the fall of the American economy.

People think rationally that the world really is more risky. Imagine in 2008 that investors thought there was a 10% chance we'd have a depression. That would partly justify the drop in prices.

Market risk is like taking a plunge into a cool pool ... a lot of people are finding out right now what their risk tolerance is.

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!

Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.

You can find good reasons to scuttle your equities in every morning paper and on every broadcast of the nightly news.

It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.

That's not to say there's no such thing as an overvalued market, but there's no point worrying about it.

"If I buy stocks on Smith's tip I must sell those same stocks on Smith's tip. I am depending on him. Suppose Smith is away on a holiday when the selling time comes around?

I don't think you should invest in commodities. Eddie Murphy made it seem risky in Trading Places.

We next consider the rule that the investor does or should consider expected return a desirable thing and variance of return an undesirable thing.

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.

It's the investor who is risky, not the investment.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.

What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might pop it.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Risk managers and investment bankers and actually, all kinds of investors took on more risk than they expected. So there was a failure of risk management. There was a failure to recognize how much risk there was in some of these securities that people bought.

Anything can happen anytime in markets. And no advisor, economist, or TV commentator-and definitely not Charlie nor I-can tell you when chaos will occur. Market forecasters will fill your ear but will never fill your wallet.