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.

The basic story remains simple and never-ending. Stocks aren't lottery tickets. There's a company attached to every share.

When even the analysts are bored, it's time to start buying.

I've always been a great lover of baseball.

If you hope to have more money tomorrow than you have today, you've got to put a chunk of your assets into stocks. Sooner or later, a portfolio of stocks or stock mutual funds will turn out to be a lot more valuable than a portfolio of bonds or CDs or money-market funds.

My method for picking stocks has never changed. When businesses go from crappy to semicrappy, there's money to be made.

In the long run, it's not just how much money you make that will determine your future prosperity. It's how much of that money you put to work by saving it and investing it.