Quinn's First Law of Investing is never to buy anything whose price you can't follow in the newspapers. An investment without a public marketplace attracts the fabulists the way picnics attract ants. Stock brokers and financial planners can tell you anything they want, because no one really knows what's true. The First Corollary to Quinn's First Law states that, even when the price is in the newspapers, you shouldn't buy anything too complex to explain to the average 12-year-old.

Never try to time the bond market. Anyone who claims to know the future of interest rates is certifiable.

Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.

The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.

The chief function of stock-market forecasters is to make astrologers look respectable.

Stock prices aren't real things. They're just froth on a wave. The wave is the only real thing, which investors forget when they're watching the ticket slither by.

It seems like only yesterday that savers were dorks. They kept piggy banks. They drove last year's cars. They fished in their change purses for nickels while the superstars flashed credit cards. Today, values have changed. The new object of veneration is not money on the hoof but money in the bank - and the dorks all have it.