As the bull market goes on, people who take great risks achieve great rewards, seemingly without punishment. It's like crime without punishment or sex without sin.

As a bull market continues, almost anything you buy goes up. It makes you feel that investing in stocks is a very easy and safe and that you're a financial genius.

The mutual fund industry and small investors are very relentless and very unforgiving if people don't perform.

The richly cadenced prose is hypnotic, the research prodigious, the analysis acute, the mood spellbinding, and the cast of characters mythic in scale. I cannot conceive of a better book about Capitol Hill. An unforgettable, epic achievement in the art of biography.

By the late 1980s people realized that houses did not always appreciate and that they could fluctuate like any other market commodity.

You don't want too much fear in a market, because people will be blinded to some very good buying opportunities. You don't want too much complacency because people will be blinded to some risk.

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.