The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.

The pure administration of Graham-and-Doddery really needs a long-term lock-up like Warren Buffett has, or it will have occasional quite dreadful client problems.

The stock market is overpriced. Everything is overpriced. Junk is king.

I believe the only things that really matter in investing are the bubbles and the busts

Everyone asks about gold. This is the irony: just as Jim Grant tells us (correctly) that we all have faith-based paper currencies backed by nothing, it is equally fair to say that gold is a faith-based metal. It pays no dividend, cannot be eaten, and is mostly used for nothing more useful than jewelry. I would say that anything of which 75% sits idly and expensively in bank vaults is, as a measure of value, only one step up from the Polynesian islands that attached value to certain well-known large rocks that were traded.

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.

Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value.