I would say that financial markets are very inefficient, and capable of extremes of being completely dysfunctional.

Battering down solar cells on the roofs of Wal-Marts in California. I think that will be some of the highest-return investments that anyone ever makes.

I like to be right. I try not to miss the big ideas, forget the little ones, and try to get them right. End of job description.

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.'

...how little our side of the industry did to move its business to the more ethical firms and to make a fuss about conflicted or unethical behavior. Had a number of us moved our business, we might have slowed or even stopped the 30-year slide in conflicted, unethical behavior that we have experienced. I, for one, regret the modest nature of our moves. We all could have done more. We have tolerated a pretty nasty decline in standards. Shame on us.

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.

The individual is far better-positioned to wait patiently for the right pitch while paying no regard to what others are doing, which is almost impossible for professionals.