The best protection against risk is knowing what you are doing.

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

Speculators are obsessed with predicting: guessing the direction of stock prices. Every morning on cable television, every afternoon on the stock market report, every weekend in Barron's, every week in dozens of market newsletters, and whenever business people get together. In reality, no one knows what the market will do; trying to predict it is a waste of time, and investing based upon that prediction is a purely speculative undertaking.

Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology. The analysis is actually the easy part. The economics, the valuation of the business isn't that hard. The psychology - how much do you buy, do you buy it at this price, do you wait for a lower price, what do you do when it looks like the world might end - those things are harder. Knowing whether you stand there, buy more, or whether something has legitimately gone wrong and you need to sell, those are harder things. That you learn with experience, by having the right psychological makeup.

Frequent comparative ranking can only reinforce a short-term investment perspective. It is understandably difficult to maintain a long-term view when, faced with the penalties for poor short-term performance, the long-term view may well be from the unemployment line ... Relative-performance-oriented investors really act as speculators. Rather than making sensible judgments about the attractiveness of specific stocks and bonds, they try to guess what others are going to do and then do it first.

Generally, the greater the stigma or revulsion, the better the bargain.

In reality, no one knows what the market will do; trying to predict it is a waste of time, and investing based upon that prediction is a speculative undertaking.