Most investors are primarily oriented toward return, how much they can make and pay little attention to risk, how much they can lose.

My experience is that short sellers do far better analysis than long buyers because they have to. The market is biased upward over time-as the saying goes, stocks are for the long run.

Markets need not be in sync with one another. Simultaneously, the bond market can be priced for sustained tough times, the equity market for a strong recovery, and gold for high inflation. Such an apparent disconnect is indefinitely sustainable.

Never stop reading. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

Because investors are not usually penalized for adhering to conventional practices, doing so is the less professionally risky strategy, even though it virtually guarantees against superior performance.

The stock market is the story of cycles and of the human behavior that is responsible for overreactions in both directions.

Short-term performance envy causes many of the shortcomings that lock most investors into a perpetual cycle of underachievement. Watch your competitors not out of jealousy but out of respect and focus your efforts not on replicating others' portfolios but on looking for opportunities where they are not. The only way for investors to significantly outperform is to periodically stand far apart from the crowd, something few are willing, or able, to do.