ENEMIES IN THE STOCK JUNGLE
Who’s our biggest enemy when it comes to investing?
William Bernstein
It’s the enemy in the mirror - ourselves.
A close second on the enemies list is the financial services industry - "muggers or worse." “if you act on the assumption that every insurance salesman, mutual fund salesperson, and financial advisor you encounter is a hardened criminal, you will do just fine.”
Andrew Spencer, chief investment officer for the retail business of J.P. Morgan Chase's Fleming asset-management arm thinks investors are stupid, but in predictable ways. That's how he makes money.
Michael Lewis' "Liar's Poker"
described the insanity of our addiction to gambling in a few memorable lines: "Men on the trading floor may not have been to school but they have Ph.D.s in man's ignorance." They know that "in any market, as in any poker game, there is a fool.
Farrell, P. B., MarketWatch
One reader commented: "I worked at the Bear Stearns . . . every word written here is true. Fact is, bankers regard themselves as wolves and the public as prey, and speak about it openly among themselves." Then he added a sucker punch: "What is extraordinary to me is how willingly the sheep submit to this."
John Rothchild, Author, a Fool and his Money, Financial Columnist, Time Magazine
The investor’s need to believe somebody is matched by the financial advisor’s need to make a nice living. If one of them has to be disappointed, it’s bound to be the former.
Jason Zweig , Money Magazine, 2005 – The individual investor is still situated at the very bottom of the food chain, a speck of plankton afloat in a sea of predators
