The interesting thing is the field is so big - it's enormous. One thing a modern civilization needs is energy.

Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to be boring in finance. What we want is innovation in widgets.

... some important factor doesn't lose its "share of force" just because some "expert" can better measure other types of force.

Chris Davis [of the Davisfunds] has a temple of shame. He celebrates the things they did that lost them a lot of money. What is also needed is a temple of shame squared for things you didn't do that would have made you rich. Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition. Reality doesn't remind you. Why not celebrate stupidities in both categories?

Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.

It's hard to predict what will happen with two brands in a market. Sometimes they will behave in a gentlemanly way, and sometimes they'll pound each other. I know of no way to predict whether they'll compete moderately or to the death. If you could figure it out, you could make a lot of money.

It's in the nature of stock markets to go way down from time to time. There's no system to avoid bad markets. You can't do it unless you try to time the market, which is a seriously dumb thing to do. Conservative investing with steady savings without expecting miracles is the way to go.