Everyone recognizes that's a joke because obviously the number and shape of the pieces doesn't affect the size of the pizza. And similarly, the stocks, bonds, warrants, etc., issued don't affect the aggregate value of the firm.

But in practice, if often comes down to not suffering a loss as big as the huge gain you made a while ago.

If there's 10,000 people looking at the stocks and trying to pick winners, one in 10,000 is going to score, by chance alone, a great coup, and that's all that's going on. It's a game, it's a chance operation, and people think they are doing something purposeful... but they're really not.

As an economics undergraduate, I also worked on a part-time basis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a company that was advising customers about portfolio decisions, writing reports.

To beat the market you'll have to invest serious bucks to dig up information no one else has yet.

Junk bonds prove there's nothing magical in a Aaa bond rating.

You only need to make one big score in finance to be a hero forever.