The Money Game

Only a longer time span reveals the truly Prudent Man, who knows that the first rule of making money is not to lose it.

When J. P. Morgan was asked what the market would do, he said, “It will fluctuate.”

It has taken me years to unlearn everything I was taught, and I probably haven’t succeeded yet. I cite this only because most of what has been written about the market tells you the way it ought to be, and the successful investors I know do not hold to the way it ought to be, they simply go with what is.

A man can break most of the Commandments with impunity, but please, let him not go bust, that will get him ostracized faster than lying, fudging on his income taxes, cheating, adultery, and coveting all the oxes and asses there are.

Who makes the really big money? The inside stockholders of a company do, when the market capitalizes the earnings of that company.

So let us heed, for a moment, Mr. Gerald Loeb, longstanding champion tape-reader and author of The Battle for Investment Survival: There is no such thing as a final answer to security values. A dozen experts will arrive at 12 different conclusions. It often happens that a few moments later each would alter his verdict if given a chance to reconside

In short, the market will not go up unless it goes up, nor will it go down unless it goes down, and it will stay the same unless it does either.

if you really know what’s going on, you don’t even have to know what’s going on to know what’s going on.

“The market,” says Mister Johnson, “is like a beautiful woman—endlessly fascinating, endlessly complex, always changing, always mystifying. I have been absorbed and immersed since 1924 and I know this is no science. It is an art. Now we have computers and all sorts of statistics, but the market is still the same and understanding the market is stil