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“Speculation is an effort, probably unsuccessful, to turn a little money into a lot. Investment is an effort, which should be successful, to prevent a lot of money from becoming a little.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“The notion, a debatable one, is that the man who knows the problems necessarily knows the answers.

This book has not been successful if it has not suggested some big-league problems, such as:

(1) Should our financial machinery be scrapped?
(2) Should it be further tinkered with, and if so, how much further?
(3) Is capitalism doomed?
(4) What active stock selling under five dollars looks hot just now for a quick turn to pay for the Buick the wife just bought?


There isn’t an assistant instructor in economics in any faculty who can’t answer these and similar questions rapidly and categorically, and if that is not enough there are a million laymen eager to do so. So I don’t feel that my vote is much needed.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“Investment and speculation are said to be two different things, and the prudent man is advised to engage in the one and avoid the other. This is something like explaining to the troubled adolescent that Love and Passion are two different things. He perceives that they are different, but they don't seem quite different enough to clear up his problems.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“Admittedly, it is preposterous to suggest that stock speculation is like coin-flipping. I know that there is more skill to stock speculation. What I have never been able to determine is - how much more?”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“Dictatorships always immediately ban short selling, since it is axiomatic with them that no professional pessimists are going to be tolerated.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“As a science, I should say that chart reading shares a pedestal with astrology; but most chart readers are educated men and have too much mental discipline to take astrology seriously.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“It seems that the immature mind has a regrettable tendency to believe, as actually true, that which it only hopes to be true.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“One can’t say that figures lie. But figures, as used in financial arguments, seem to have the bad habit of expressing a small part of the truth forcibly, and neglecting the other part, as do some people we know.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“Orderly markets, like horse races, exist on differences of opinion.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“The S.E.C. has not been loath to join the popular hue and cry against the friendless short seller. From this we have a right to deduce that they not only want an orderly market, but a market which shall forever gently rise. Of course, that conception is just plain silly, like Voltaire’s suggestion that a community ought to be able to support itself by everybody taking in everybody else’s washing.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“In our moments of sober thought we all realize that booms are bad things, not good. But nearly all of us have a secret hankering for another one. “ Another little orgy wouldn’t do us any harm,” is the feeling that persists both downtown and up.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“The croupier at the roulette table does not claim that he knows something about the order in which the numbers will come up. He just sees to it that the bets are properly paid off and that the house isn't gypped - which is a job requiring competence.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures. Nor can any description that I might offer here even approximate what it feels like to lose a real chunk of money that you used to own.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“His business might be defined as the lending of money exclusively to people who have no pressing need of it.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street

“The indignation school of writers never tires of pointing out the millions that are stolen in the Street. But while the millions are being stolen, the billions are being lost. Nothing crooked—just bad luck and bad brains met together in an effort to do something that couldn’t be done in the first place.”
― Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street