americanwallstreetworldreallydominatedprofessionalspeculatorsstockpoolsthesepeoplemonopolyoverinformation
In the 1920s, Wall Street was a world that was really dominated by professional speculators and stock pools. These people had a monopoly over information.
One of the special characteristics of New York is that it is different from a London or a Paris because it's the financial capital, and the cultural capital, but not the political capital.
That strategy of buy and hold, which is the sound and sensible one for the individual, can have very dangerous and perverse effects for the market as a whole.
There were two qualities about the mutual funds of the 1920s that made them extremely speculative. One was that they were heavily leveraged. Two, mutual funds were allowed to invest in other mutual funds.
Partly because his life ended before the age of 50, Hamilton was defined by the other founding fathers, and he managed, with amazing consistency, to alienate most of them.
As a bull market continues, almost anything you buy goes up. It makes you feel that investing in stocks is a very easy and safe and that you're a financial genius.
Stock market corrections, although painful at the time, are actually a very healthy part of the whole mechanism, because there are always speculative excesses that develop, particularly during the long bull market.
Because of the love affair between the American public and the stock market, it is possible for entrepreneurs, technological visionaries and inventors of every sort to get financing.
I think one of the important things that's happened in the course of the century is that life expectancy has doubled.
The best argument for mutual funds is that they offer safety and diversification. But they don't necessarily offer safety and diversification.
You don't want too much fear in a market, because people will be blinded to some very good buying opportunities. You don't want too much complacency because people will be blinded to some risk.
Mutual funds have historically offered safety and diversification. And they spare you the responsibility of picking individual stocks.
I have developed a very strong partiality for the dead: they don't talk back, they don't sue, and they don't have angry relatives.
After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.
Hamilton had one of those extraordinary 18th-century minds that touched on virtually every major topic of the day.
In the 1920s you could buy stocks on margin. You could put 10 percent down and borrow the rest against your stocks.