Everyone has the brainpower to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach. If you are susceptible to selling everything in a panic, you ought to avoid stocks and mutual funds altogether.

Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.

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

You shouldn't just pick a stock - you should do your homework.

It would be wonderful if we could avoid the setbacks with timely exits, but nobody has figured out how to predict them.

Twenty years in this business convinces me that any normal person using the customary three percent of the brain can pick stocks just as well, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert.

If you can follow only one bit of data, follow the earnings - assuming the company in question has earnings. I subscribe to the crusty notion that sooner or later earnings make or break an investment in equities. What the stock price does today, tomorrow, or next week is only a distraction.