Quotes from Where Are the Customer's Yachts

Some quotes and food for thought in this bullish and crazy market.  

The hardest part of being bearish in a booming market — or just underinvested in a market — is seeing everyone but you make money as the market rises. Missing gains can turn bears bullish, with a risk of it happening late in the cycle.

“When there is a stock-market boom, and everyone is scrambling for common stocks, take all your common stocks and sell them. Take the proceeds and buy conservative bonds. No doubt the stocks you sold will go higher. Pay no attention to this — just wait for the depression which will come sooner or later. When this depression — or panic — becomes a national catastrophe, sell out the bonds (perhaps at a loss) and buy back the stocks. No doubt the stocks will go still lower. Again pay no attention. Wait for the next boom. Continue to repeat this operation as long as you live, and you’ll have the pleasure of dying rich… It looks as easy as rolling off a log, but it isn’t. The chief difficulties, of course, are psychological. It requires buying bonds when bonds are generally unpopular, and buying stocks when stocks are universally detested.”

Bankers lend conservatively during depressed times — lending to those who don’t need money — but lend liberally during prosperous times to anyone who wants money.

“Like most Wall Streeters, bankers suffer from the inability to do nothing. Your average Wall Streeter, faced with nothing profitable to do, does nothing for only a brief time. Then, suddenly and hysterically, he does something which turns out to be extremely unprofitable. He is not a lazy man.”

The benefit to being a lazy investor is that an ambitious investor often tries to double their money as quickly as possible but ends up losing it all.

Some lessons, like losing money, can only be learned by experience: “There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures. Nor can any description that I might offer here even approximate what it feels like to lose a real chunk of money that you used to own.” “Like all of life’s rich emotional experiences, the full flavor of losing important money cannot be conveyed by literature. You cannot convey to an inexperienced girl what it is truly like to be a wife and mother. There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin by words or pictures.”

“It is easy to take a small profit, but taking a small loss is frequently just a good intention. Eventually the customer finds himself throwing good money after bad, until there isn’t any good money left.”