The Great Inflation of the 1970s destroyed faith in paper assets, because if you held a bond, suddenly the bond was worth much less money than it was before.

Mutual funds have historically offered safety and diversification. And they spare you the responsibility of picking individual stocks.

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.

After 1929, so many people had been traumatized by the stock market crash that there was a lost generation.

There is a kind of fear, approaching a panic, that's spreading through the Baby Boom Generation, which has suddenly discovered that it will have to provide for its own retirement.

Unless you devote an enormous amount of time to anticipating the future, you won't have any future.

That strategy of buy and hold, which is the sound and sensible one for the individual, can have very dangerous and perverse effects for the market as a whole.