Market Reality Quotes

Ridiculous as our market volatility might seem to an intelligent Martian, it is our reality and everyone loves to trot out the 'quote' attributed to Keynes (but never documented): 'The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent.' For us agents, he might better have said 'The market can stay irrational longer than the client can stay patient.'

What people in business think they know about the customer and market is likely to be more wrong than right...the customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

Economic growth is based partly on reality and partly on perception.

I have a name for people who went to the extreme efficient market theory-which is "bonkers". It was an intellectually consistent theory that enabled them to do pretty mathematics. So I understand its seductiveness to people with large mathematical gifts. It just had a difficulty in that the fundamental assumption did not tie properly to reality.

The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time to have a view that is at variance with the present consensus and bet that view. The hard part is that the investor must measure himself not by his own perceptions of his performance, but by the objective measure of the market. The market has its own reality. In an immediate emotional sense the market is always right so if you take a variant point of view you will always be bombarded for some time by conventional wisdom as expressed by the market.

The U. S. trade deficit with China shows that while we value the potential of their market, they value the reality of our market. It is in this area that we should use our leverage.

I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.

Doubts are suppressed by groups... But remember that the internal incentives that shape how the group perceives risks and rewards may be very different from the reality of the risks and rewards in the external marketplace. Those incentives can distort risk perception.

Just being able to trade financial commodities is a serious limitation because financial commodities represent only a tiny fraction of the reality of the real commodity exposure picture. We need to be active in the underlying physical commodity markets in order to understand and make prices.

Tech stocks were the cubic zirconium of the market. They looked good and were sexy, but they just were a way for the company selling them to make money. That's always going to be transient in terms of the stock market. What's real is that companies have to compete. Technology used well is a great tool to enable that if only because most companies dont use technologies well.

I am not well qualified to criticize the theory of rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis because as a market participant I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them.

You can't change the market; the market just is.

The box office in an arthouse film is always going to be small. We have to face this and overcome this.

People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it's simply a measurement.

Isn't it interesting that markets are not just perfect? In business school and economic theory, you learn all about those perfect markets, and there's no such thing as a perfect market.

Ignoring platforms that have gained critical mass is a great way to look slow and out-of-touch. Do not cling to nostalgia. Do not put your principles above the reality of the market. Do not be a snob.

Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they're greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In reality, they often play a key role in making markets run smoothly.

It's unrealistic to think you can only have one good product. People are not that poor. They can buy what they want.

The truth is, a large majority of the market, I'd guess 80 percent, doesn't know anything more than what they are sold.

The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him.

Let's put it this way: art house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there's a shift in what audiences want to see. And they have to be aware of that and be realistic. It's as simple as that.

Not exclusively, but the bulk of our local economy should be covered by local currencies, which is more efficient than having global currencies which lose connection with reality in the markets, shops and communities of the people.

I believe that the mutual fund industry's biggest shortcoming is too much focus on the momentary price of a stock - an illusion - and too little focus on the intrinsic value of the corporation - the ultimate reality. I'm comforted by the fact that Warren Buffett feels the same way.

I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good.