Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.
I would rather sustain the penalties resulting from over-conservatism than face the consequences of error, perhaps with permanent capital loss, resulting from the adoption of "New Era" philosophy where trees really do grow to the sky.
The investor has a right to expect good results to flow from a consistent and courageous application of the principle of buying after the market has declined substantially and selling after it has had a spectacular rise. But he cannot expect to reduce this principle to a simple and foolproof formula, with profits guaranteed and no anxious periods.
There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.
speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.
Workers are on the streets today with a clear message to Europe's leaders. There is a great danger that workers are going to pay the price for the reckless speculation that took place in financial markets.
My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.
No nation can say, 'We will capitulate to tyranny rather than accept a speculative fate - to accept an absolute fate in alternative to a speculative one' - no nation can do that.
Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal.
One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.
