Barry Ritholtz Quotes
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As investors, we want to believe we are smart, insightful and uniquely talented - even though we often fail to do the heavy lifting, put in the long hours, and make the uncomfortable but necessary decisions to achieve success.
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Mutual fund managers want your money in their funds. They get paid based on assets under management.
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It is in your DNA to love a good story. You know, neat tales with heroes and villains and conflicts to resolve. A good story pushes our buttons, is exciting and memorable.
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Many hedge fund managers have become billionaires; perhaps this - plus their reputations as the smartest guys in the room - is why they have captured the investing public's imagination.
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People who work in specialized fields seem to have their own language. Practitioners develop a shorthand to communicate among themselves. The jargon can almost sound like a foreign language.
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Active management leads to lots of poor investor behavior. It sends people chasing after whoever has the hot hand at the moment.
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Salesmen always need something to sell.
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When markets are rallying, cash in the portfolio is a drag on performance, returning about zero.
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Anyone can make an article longer; the skill is keeping it tight and lean.
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Any investment bought via credit always runs the risk of margin calls and, eventually, liquidation.
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If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.
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You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck.
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Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.
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If I am going to trash others for their dumb predictions, I must at least hold myself to the same sort of accountability.
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Despite all the media coverage, glitz and glam of hedge funds, they have not done well for their investors. They have high - some say excessively high - fees; their short- and long-term performance has been poor.
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Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras.
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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.
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Getting more and more of our news from the social network is having significant repercussions for markets - and your money.
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Any time you speak to people about their posture, you learn about their most recent investment activity. When someone just bought stocks, they tend to be bullish; someone who just sold is bearish.
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Owning a variety of asset classes means that some part of your portfolio will be doing well when the cyclical turmoil arises. A broadly diversified portfolio includes large capitalization stocks, small cap, emerging markets, fixed income, real estate and commodities.
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Indeed, eventually, random outcomes all revert to the mean, meaning that streaks eventually end. Understanding this is a key part of intelligent and rational investing.
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Often, investors will discover a manager after he's had a terrific run, usually when he lands on a magazine cover somewhere. Invariably, funds swell up with new investor money just before they revert to their long-term averages.
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Secular cycles are the long periods - as long as decades - that come to define each market era. These cycles alternate between long-term bull and bear markets.
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When it comes to investing, you are your own worst enemy.