Month: October 2019

If you know much about the average customer of the average commission house you will agree with that the hope of making the stock market pay your bill is one of the most prolific sources of loss in Wall Street.

Of all speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game.

Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit.

“I am carrying so much cotton that I can’t sleep thinking about it. It is wearing me out. What can I do?”

“Sell down to the sleeping point,” answered the friend.

If instead it reacted it meant that precedents had failed me and I was wrong; and the only thing to do when a man is wrong is to be right by ceasing to be wrong.

But you find many people, reputed to be intelligent, who are bullish because they have stocks.

But the average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think. It is too much bother to have to count the money that he picks up from the ground.

One of the most helpful things that anybody can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eight–or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon.

Some men, like old Russell Sage, have the money-making and the money-hoarding instinct equally well developed, and of course they die disgustingly rich.