Financial Market Commentary

Due to the gradual increase in the proportion of equity owned by persons who neither manage nor have special knowlege of the enterprise, the element of real knowledge of the value of investments has declined. Day-to-day fluctuations in the profits of existing investments, which are obviously of an ephemeral nature, have an excessive — even absurd — influence on the market.

A conventional valuation which is established as the outcome of the mass psychology of a large number of ignorant individuals is liable to change violently as the result of a sudden fluctuation of opinion due to factors that do not really make much difference, since there will be no strong roots to hold it steady.

— John Maynard Keynes

The Fed’s primary job is really quite simple: Protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system. In this they have sadly failed.

— Jeremy Grantham

Is it not now clear that the main macroeconomic challenges facing the world today are an excess demand for commodities and an excess supply of financial services?

— Kenneth Rogoff

Full-time professionals in other fields, let’s say dentists, bring a lot to the layman. But in the aggregate, people get nothing for their money from professional money managers.

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

— Warren Buffet

Have investment management games become loser’s games, just like tic-tac-toe?  Think about it.

— John Bogle