Words of Wisdom

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances

Once I exceeded 19 miles, I wasn��t all there mentally. . . . I knew my body hurt, I knew my body was exhausted�Xbut I kept telling it to put one foot in front of the other. There was no option other than to keep going. ~ Marathon runner David Funderburke

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard! Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win! ~ President John F. Kennedy

Fearful people and pessimistic ones were unwilling to take much risk, while angry people and optimistic ones often actively seek it.

Fearful people and pessimistic ones assess risk as relatively high, while angry people and optimistic ones assess the same risk as relatively low.

Angry people have a higher than average likelihood to divorce, suffer cardiovascular disease, and face problems at work, whereas angry people rate themselves less likely to experience these problems.

The challenge facing regulators in the United States and other countries that are relatively free of insider trading is the challenge of freeing markets of insider trading while keeping outside investors aware that markets are not entirely free of in-sider trading.

Citizens who are aware that streets teem with muggers restrain their optimism, venturing into the streets as little as possible. And outside investors who are aware that stock markets teem with insiders restrain their optimism, venturing into stock mar-kets as little as possible.

Stockbrokers and stock exchanges have good reasons to promote unrealistic optimism because unrealistically optimistic investors trade more often than realistic ones, adding more to the revenues and profits of brokers and exchanges.

Optimism bolsters self control necessary to overcome temptations on our way to our goals.

Optimists gird themselves to exert greater efforts when they anticipate greater temptations, whether tempted by spending when they save for a house or watching television when they study for an exam.

Optimism, even if unrealistic, is mostly a blessing. Opti-mists are happier than realists; they recover faster from surgery and adjust more smoothly to major life transitions, such as leav-ing home for college, looking for a job, or healing after a di-vorce.

Investors overestimate the future returns of their invest-ments relative to the returns of the average investor. Investors even overestimate their past returns relative to the returns of the average investor.

Perhaps the worst mistake that an investor can make is to become possessed of the idea that he should back a new invention.

Professional investors are swayed by sentiment no less than individual investors.

On average, stocks of admired companies delivered lower returns than stocks of spurned companies.

People expect higher returns from the stocks of companies whose names are easy to pronounce than from stocks of companies whose names are difficult to pronounce.

Investors who sold stocks at a loss retain negative sentiment toward these stocks and are less likely to buy them again. In contrast, investors retain positive sentiment toward stocks they have sold at a gain and are more likely to buy them again.

Between $800 million and $900 million in business are lost in the United States on each Friday the 13th because people who consider the day unlucky stay away from work or business.

(L)oans to beautiful loan applicants are bad investments because beautiful borrowers are much less likely to repay their loans than less attractive borrowers.

Beauty matters in life and loans alike. Beautiful applicants are more likely to get loans and pay lower interest rates than less attractive applicants with the same financial information.

��Don��t gamble,�� said Will Rogers, ��take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don��t go up, don��t buy it.��

��Don��t gamble,�� said Will Rogers, ��take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don��t go up, don��t buy it.��

Surgeons, lawyers, and teachers with no knowledge of their fields cannot hope to earn average incomes. Yet investors with no knowledge of stocks earn average returns by nothing more than investing in index funds.

Divergence of stock prices from their values is a prerequisite for beating the market. All we need to do now is sell stocks whose prices exceed their values and buy stocks whose prices fall short of their values.

For heaven��s sake, you do not need to have a love affair with your stock just because you bought it. Love is sometimes fickle, you know. ~ Humphrey Neill

Sympathy�K[is] much fainter than our concern for ourselves, and sympathy with persons remote from us much fainter than that with persons near and contiguous. ~ David Hume

Community breeds emotions. Ardent fans of sports teams enjoy higher levels of self-esteem and suffer fewer bouts of depression.

We give movies higher ratings when we watch them with other people and when our emotions are in sync with their emotions. We even synchronize our emotions, mimicking one another with no awareness that we are doing so.

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. ~ Babe Ruth, Baseball Player