Salesmen always need something to sell.

In the investment business, you must expect to be wrong.

When it comes to investing, you are your own worst enemy.

Returnless risk is not how you prepare for a decent retirement.

'Returnless risk' is not how you prepare for a decent retirement.

Good investors must learn to contextualize the daily background noise.

Markets are frequently ahead of, and often out of sync with, the economy.

Most of Google's home technologies have failed to catch on in a major way.

I have been a member of the Microsoft-bashing society for quite some time.

Anyone can make an article longer; the skill is keeping it tight and lean.

Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple.

We love a tale of heroes and villains and conflicts requiring a neat resolution.

How are the cabs in your city? In Manhattan, where I work, they are rather awful.

When it comes to investing, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all portfolio.

The consumption and production of energy is a major component of the global economy.

Gains in corporate profits depend in large part on accelerating global economic growth.

Twitter has become a group conversation of that type that used to take place on trading floors.

When markets are rallying, cash in the portfolio is a drag on performance, returning about zero.

The beauty of diversification is it's about as close as you can get to a free lunch in investing.

There is a shortage of doctors, and the American Medical Association is aiming to keep it that way.

Any investment bought via credit always runs the risk of margin calls and, eventually, liquidation.

Mutual fund managers want your money in their funds. They get paid based on assets under management.

A well-designed 401(k) plan is an enormous competitive edge when recruiting and retaining employees.

History is replete with examples of tech firms that were marginalized by new companies and technologies.

When you buy anything with lots of leverage, it does not require a whole lot to go wrong to lose it all.

The data strongly suggest that very good years in the U.S. stock market are followed by more good years.

You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up seven is still a function of random luck.

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck.

Forecasting is simply not a strength of the species; we are much better with tools and narrative storytelling.

Have a well-thought financial plan that is not dependent upon correctly guessing what will happen in the future.

This ugly duckling investment will likely need time - quarters, or even years - to blossom into a beautiful swan.

In social media, people cannot build big followings organically unless what they are putting out to the world has value.

If I am going to trash others for their dumb predictions, I must at least hold myself to the same sort of accountability.

If you have read me for any length of time, you know I am less than enthralled with much of what passes for financial news.

Getting more and more of our news from the social network is having significant repercussions for markets - and your money.

In New York, the former lack of real competition allowed taxis to extract excessive charges, regardless of the poor service.

One thing I detest most about the financial press is the lack of accountability. All sorts of nonsense is said without penalty.

Active management leads to lots of poor investor behavior. It sends people chasing after whoever has the hot hand at the moment.

Any Wall Street advertising that does not go into the boring details of methodology is most likely to be pushing past performance.

Even when you are right, there are costs and taxes associated with being tactical. When you are wrong, there are opportunity costs.

History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year.

Narrative drives most of economics. Everything seems to be part of a story, and how that story is told often leads to critical error.

The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers.

If you think too-big-to-fail banks are not worthy of investment because of their impossible-to-read balance sheets, well then, don't buy them.

Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.

To know whether stocks are cheap or pricey, we typically look at price-to-earnings ratio. Valuation is a tougher question than many folks realize.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

Truth be told, most financial television bores me. Two or more people discussing the latest economic trends or hot stocks is not especially entertaining.

The bottom line is this: Cash, in modest increments, has a role in any portfolio. But unless you are Warren Buffett, you should limit it to 2 or 3 percent.

Share This Page