Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.
Interpretation
Investing should be approached with patience and not as a source of excitement.
This quote by Paul Samuelson emphasizes that investing is a slow and steady process that requires patience, and it should not be viewed as a thrilling endeavor. Instead of seeking immediate excitement and action, one should understand that successful investing is about long-term growth, much like the gradual changes we observe in nature.
In practice
A financial advisor might use this quote to educate clients about the importance of a long-term investment strategy.
To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.
I can't think of a president who has been overburdened by a knowledge of economics.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
My family was well off but not rich. I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble. That was a disequilibrium system. I realized that the ordinary old-fashioned Euclidean geometry didn't apply.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
After costs, only the top 3% of managers produce a return that indicates they have sufficient skill to just cover their costs, which means that going forward, and despite extraordinary past returns, even the top performers are expected to be only as good as a low-cost passive index fund. The other 97% can be expected to do worse.
Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.
People come in. They are too gung ho. They invest too much money in things they don't know. They lose it and then they clam up and stop investing. Then they miss the actual boom. That's the nature of the market.
Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket... it's part-ownership of a business.
Never, ever invest money that you will need prior to three to five years - minimum.
I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks and balances in the market.
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