Stock Quotes - page 20
How good are markets in predicting real-world developments? Reading the record, it is striking how many calamities that I anticipated did not in fact materialise.
Financial markets constantly anticipate events, both on the positive and on the negative side, which fail to materialise exactly because they have been anticipated.
It is an old joke that the stock market has predicted seven of the last two recessions. Markets are often wrong.
George Soros
The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry.
George Soros
You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
Ayn Rand
Do we have a free press today? Sure we do. It's free to report all the sex scandals it wants, all the stock market news we can handle, every new health fad that comes down the pike, and every celebrity marriage or divorce that happens. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff-stories like Tailwind, the October Surprise, the El Mozote massacre, corporate corruption, or CIA involvement in drug trafficking-that's where we begin to see the limits of our freedoms. In today's media environment, sadly, such stories are not even open for discussion. Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping Europe, legendary investigative reporter George Seldes observed that "it is possible to fool all the people all the time-when government and press cooperate.”.
Gary Webb
With the exception of some early Christian sects that were exterminated when the Fathers of the Church wormed their way to power and could start killing their competitors, Christianity, during the greater part of its history, enforced celibacy and homosexuality on a fairly large part of our race, including some of its most intelligent members, through the priesthood and monasticism, and broke up families and family property by prohibiting marriages between even fairly distant relatives. Islam, on the other hand, ordained polygyny and encouraged Moslems to fill their harems, and engender children by women of all different races; that is why the Arabic stock was diluted and liquidated so much more quickly than our own.
Revilo P. Oliver
The finance conception of the modern corporation, which currently dominates, emphasizes control through the use of financial tools which measure performance according to profit rates. Product lines are evaluated on their short-run profitability and important management decisions are based on the potential profitability of each line. Firms are viewed as collections of assets earning differing rates of return, not as producers of given goods. The firm is not seen as being a member of only one industry. Consequently if the prospect of an industry in which it participates declines, the firm disinvests. The problem for management from this perspective is to maximize short-run rates of return by altering product mix, thereby increasing shareholder equity and keeping the stock price high.
Neil Fligstein
Quality before quantity any day. Build up with the best. What does it matter if it is a hundred years, or two hundred years, or more, before your country is full? Keep the stock you have, and the men and women you have, and see that the coming generations are in no way inferior to them.
Stanley Baldwin
It is a curious fact, that the true has always been more opposed at the outset than the false; the circulation of the blood and vaccination nearly lost their discoverers credit and practice, while some vender of quack medicines makes a rapid fortune. This may perhaps be accounted for, simply, that the impostor addresses the multitude, while the scientific discoverer appeals to his brethren in knowledge, all of whom are inclined to deny, what, if admitted, must show, that a great part of their own research and acquirement has been in vain; still he who trades on human credulity will have a good stock on hand, especially when the lure held forth is that of gain.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
