The founding fathers were not only brilliant, they were system builders and systematic thinkers. They came up with comprehensive plans and visions.
Mutual funds have historically offered safety and diversification. And they spare you the responsibility of picking individual stocks.
After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.
As the bull market goes on, people who take great risks achieve great rewards, seemingly without punishment. It's like crime without punishment or sex without sin.
As a bull market continues, almost anything you buy goes up. It makes you feel that investing in stocks is a very easy and safe and that you're a financial genius.
Ultimately, the appraisal of Grant's presidency rests upon posterity's view of Reconstruction.
When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.
One of the very nice things about investing in the stock market is that you learn about all different aspects of the economy. It's your window into a very large world.
You don't want too much fear in a market, because people will be blinded to some very good buying opportunities. You don't want too much complacency because people will be blinded to some risk.
What I find very interesting about the mutual funds managers is that here are people who are the new masters of the universe. They're managing billions, yet they're subject to this quiet daily tyranny of numbers.
The American public historically was really not part of the stock market.
When the market is just going up, up, and up, we all tend to be blind to the holes in the market. They're all papered over by the rise.
There were two qualities about the mutual funds of the 1920s that made them extremely speculative. One was that they were heavily leveraged. Two, mutual funds were allowed to invest in other mutual funds.
That strategy of buy and hold, which is the sound and sensible one for the individual, can have very dangerous and perverse effects for the market as a whole.
I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don't talk back, they don't sue, and they don't have angry relatives.
In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.
Hamilton was young, dashing, and romantic. He lent himself perfectly to be the star of a musical.
It's a shameful thing to admit for someone who writes such long books, but I read so slowly that I almost subvocalize.
I'm sure there are many more people who can identify with failure and hardship in life than with the success of an Alexander Hamilton or a John D. Rockefeller.
Partly because his life ended before the age of 50, Hamilton was defined by the other founding fathers, and he managed, with amazing consistency, to alienate most of them.
