Investment Wisdom

Some of my favorite quotes:

Albert Einstein ~

"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be" 

"Any fool can know. The point is to understand."

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them"

Peter Bernstein ~

"The market is not an accommodating machine; it won't give you high returns just because you need them"

G.K. Chesterton ~

"The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait."

Dave Ramsey

"Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest."

Benjamin Franklin ~

"An investment in knowledge pays the best dividends"

Warren Buffet ~

"I will tell you how to become rich. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."

"Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing."

Elon Musk ~

"If your going through hell, keep going"

Confucius ~

"What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning" 

Margaret Thatcher ~

"To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects." 

Joe Duran ~

"Money is nothing more than fuel. It is a resource that lets you have choices, but if you don't think about what you are working for, you will die rich but not live rich." 

Some of my favorite books on investing (yes some of them are old but in my experience investment wisdom is timeless):


A Random Walk Down Wall Street ~

This book got me into investing. I took a college course on investing and after the first day I was lost and I felt others were not. I went in to ask my teacher if there was another class I should take before this one and he said to read the first four chapters of this book and I would know as much as anyone in the class. I did and I ended up getting the highest grade in the class.

The Intelligent Investor ~

This one is a bit more technical but the ideas are very sound. It is biased towards value investing which is a good way to go if you are susceptible to trying to time the market. Value investing helps us trade against fear and greed. The lesson you should not learn from this (a lesson I learned and then unlearned through experience) is that everything that has gone down in price by a lot is a good investment. 

The Most Important Thing ~

Howard Marks is a great investor and this book highlights what I have based my whole investment philosophy on, that markets move in cycles. Like most value investors, Howard is always early to pull out of markets and this hurts his long term returns but he is always defensive when things turn bad and that has value when mixed into a portfolio with more aggressive managers. Howard has spent his career thinking about market fluctuations and watching them and his wisdom, though repetitive, is invaluable.