This ugly duckling investment will likely need time - quarters, or even years - to blossom into a beautiful swan.

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

If I am going to trash others for their dumb predictions, I must at least hold myself to the same sort of accountability.

'Excessive regulation in the banking reform bill will destroy a substantial part of our bond-distributing machinery. Can anyone expect that a step of this kind will improve the quality of our long-term investments?'

Unlike cheap stocks, inexpensive asset classes have a lower chance of big drawdowns (broad asset classes don't go to zero) and a higher probability of average or better returns.

For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation. The Boskin Commission... was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can't afford it.

History is replete with examples of tech firms that were marginalized by new companies and technologies.