I hate gold. It does not pay a dividend, it has no value, and you can't work out what it should or shouldn't be worth," he said. "It is the last refuge of the desperate.

It is better to be lucky than good, but of course appropriate to aspire to both.

Ridiculous as our market volatility might seem to an intelligent Martian, it is our reality and everyone loves to trot out the 'quote' attributed to Keynes (but never documented): 'The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent.' For us agents, he might better have said 'The market can stay irrational longer than the client can stay patient.'

I think I'm right-brained, incapable of managing my way out of a brown paper bag.

Think how weird profit margins are: We've got high unemployment and financial crises - and world record profit margins. People think the American market is very cheap. We don't. The market quite incorrectly gives full credit to today's earnings.

You don't actually find a strong correlation between- top-line GDP growth and making money in the market. It- it seems like you should. The fastest-growing countries should give you the highest return. They simply don't. But, there's only four of us- that- that believe that story. Everyone else in the world believes that if you grow fast like China, you'll outperform in the stock market.

The investment business has taught me – increasingly as the years have passed – that people, especially investors (and, I believe, Americans), prefer good news and wishful thinking to bad news; and that there are always vested interests to offer facile, optimistic alternatives to the bad news.