In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

People who want to know how stocks fared on any given day ask, "Where did the Dow close?" I'm more interested in how many stocks went up versus how many went down. These so-called advance/decline numbers paint a more realistic picture.

Stocks are a safe bet, but only if you stay invested long enough to ride out the corrections.

Owning stocks is like having children - don't get involved with more than you can handle.

Never invest in a company without understanding its finances. The biggest losses in stocks come from companies with poor balance sheets.

You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets.

I talk to hundreds of companies a year and spend hour after hour in heady pow-wows with CEOs, financial analysts and my colleagues in the mutual-fund business, but I stumble onto the big winners in extracurricular situations, the same way you do.