The irony is that this is a money game and money is the way we keep score. But the real object of the Game is not money, it is the playing of the Game itself. For the true players, you could take all the trophies away and substitute plastic beads or whale’s teeth; as long as there is a way to keep score, they will play.

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.

The learned psychiatrist had picked, out of all the thousands of stocks, the one that permitted him to lose every penny. The happy ending is that we may all learn something, because he is still writing his book. It will be out next year, and I can hardly wait, since he saved his insight for publication.

“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

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.

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

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

What is it the good managers have? It’s a kind of locked-in concentration, an intuition, a feel, nothing that can be schooled. The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

If you don’t know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out.