Stock Historical Quotes

How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?

Look at that! The entire Australian kit dates from the 1940s and the uniforms are falling apart at the seams, the fucking boots you have issued to us are the same and everything is rotten. As for bloody weapons, we are issued with the Owen sub-machine gun. While the gun is still a very good weapon, the 9mm ammunition it uses is old WW2 stock and its propellants have deteriorated to the point where I doubt if the round will penetrate the back-pack of a fleeing Noggie!

Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago—and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no,' but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom'—one of Yvonne's stock phrases—makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders.

Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom—that the current economic and political system is the only possible one—the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone’s blueprint? It’s not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called “capitalism,” figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin.

He interrupts her again. "I will stay without complaining..." "You have no choice!" "...if you'll do two things." The teasing has long left his face. He is dead serious. I should leave but I can't. I know I'm about to witness a historic event, and I lurk next to the door, my eyes glued to Charlotte and Ambrose. "Okay," Charlotte says, matching his gravity. "Promise me you'll come back." Charlotte is silent. "And give me a kiss good-bye." "What?" Charlotte blurts. "You heard me." She stands stock-still for a good couple of seconds before raising her fingertips to her mouth. Her eyes glitter with tears as she sits back down on the side of his bed. And taking his good hand in hers, she leans forward and kisses him. It is a slow kiss. It is a lingering kiss. It's the kiss she's been waiting for for years.

Relationality [is] not only [a] descriptive or historical fact of our formation, but also an ongoing normative dimension of our social and political lives, one in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence.

It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him.

She says it is a school for bluestockings which, according to her, is really only a fashionable way of saying it is a school for ugly girls who cannot find suitable husbands. To tease her, for I believe it is one of his greatest pleasures in this life, my father bought a pair of blue silk stockings for me the day we received my letter of acceptance. That evening and the next, father and I dined alone.

Wicked eyes are not a good prospect for seminary boys. They want a gentle, soft sort of wife, not a wife who looks as though she may sprout wings and carry off the young children of the village. ~Maria "Smythe

I had turned to leave and he had called after me. “Miss Maria, I kin no other woman who could be wearing men’s trousers and be dripping such as ye are and look quite so lovely. It’s a right shame your mother is marrying you off to that great sot!” I had turned to call back to him, “I doubt very much we will have to worry about that after today!

Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wicked looking to capture the heart of any sensible young man.

These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady’s things—hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell.

Love was like a stock, Lizzie realized. You gambled on its paying off in the long run—but it could just as easily cost you everything.

The differences of Mr. [Patrick] Matthew's views from mine are not of much importance: he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive periods, and then re-stocked;

Turning back to the crowd I say, “I am duty bound to make this plea, but I want to say, with all due respect to the governor here, that I doubt seriously that he will do — cannot do — anything. And for the reason that he is owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the capitalists who placed him here in this building.” — Mother Jones

Directly in front of me, crossing the street, I saw a woman laughing and walking arm in arm with two men. When she came to the curb, she lifted her skirt with both hands and vulgarly displayed a pair of indigo stockings.

Quincy and Fisher walked through all this in silence. Silence was the most common stock-in-trade between them, and the portfolio of their friendship was thick with it. So, without words, they stepped across the streets, their feet pressing the pavement with the same sounds, their toes turned just so; they knew what life was like at each other's side. Sometimes he would speak, or she would, small offerings on the altar of their joint survival.

The nearly perfect historical correlation between increasing productivity and rising incomes broke down: wages for most Americans stagnated and, for many workers, even declined; income inequality soared to levels not seen since the eve of the 1929 stock market crash; and a new phrase—“jobless recovery”—found a prominent place in our vocabulary.

When we decided to move West, I worried about how to defend my family and my stock from Indians, but I never worried about inheriting one!” --from Prairie Grace when Georgia's father Thomas realizes gravely ill Gray Wolf has been left at their doorstep

Do not trust historical data—especially recent data—to estimate the future returns of stocks and bonds. Instead, rely on interest and dividend payouts and their growth/failure rates.

In this world everything that is not of sound racial stock is like chaff. Every historical event in the world is nothing more nor less than a manifestation of the instinct of racial self-preservation, whether for weal or woe.

The Industrial Revolution appears to be in its final stages and it will be remembered as a time where industrial stock markets were at historic highs at the same time that many natural processes were shutting down, including the next generation of humans.

It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution of theology will be like its beginning—it will cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman argues that investing in high-quality early learning will yield a rate of return of 6 to 10 percent per year per child—higher than historic stock market returns—in higher academic achievement, greater productivity in the workforce, and fewer drains on society.74

We can discuss this point from different angles. Experts call one manifestation of such denigration of history historical determinism. In a nutshell we think that we would know when history is made; we believe that people who, say, witnessed the stock market crash of 1929 knew then that they lived an acute historical event and that, should these events repeat themselves, they too would know about such facts. Life for us is made to resemble an adventure movie, as we know ahead of time that something big is about to happen. It is hard to imagine that people who witnessed history did not know at the time how important the moment was. Somehow all respect we may have for history does not translate well into our treatment of the present.

A glance would not be enough to tell you this was the daughter of Katherine Raquel Demure. Even a lingering gaze would not suffice. No. Only careful study of the original and a comparative inspection of her only child would even hint at a relation between the two. Viktor could see it and knew, beyond doubt, that Henrietta not only saw it but was also vexed by it on a daily basis.

him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor — a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so — and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some "females" — as he always calls women — in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the

An American home has not, historically speaking, been a lucrative investment. In fact, according to an index developed by Robert Shiller and his colleague Karl Case, the market price of an American home has barely increased at all over the long run. After adjusting for inflation, a $10,000 investment made in a home in 1896 would be worth just $10,600 in 1996. The rate of return had been less in a century than the stock market typically produces in a single year.

Spreadsheets can model the historic frequency of big stock market declines. But they can’t model the feeling of coming home, looking at your kids, and wondering if you’ve made a mistake that will impact their lives. Studying history makes you feel like you understand something. But until you’ve lived through it and personally felt its consequences, you may not understand it enough to change your behavior. We all think we know how the world works. But we’ve all only experienced a tiny sliver of it.

The American Revolution and its aftermath coincided with two great transformations in the late eighteenth century. In the political sphere, there had been a repudiation of royal rule, fired by a new respect for individual freedom, majority rule, and limited government. If Hamilton made distinguished contributions in this sphere, so did Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. In contrast, when it came to the parallel economic upheavals of the period—the industrial revolution, the expansion of global trade, the growth of banks and stock exchanges—Hamilton was an American prophet without peer. No other founding father straddled both of these revolutions—only Franklin even came close—and therein lay Hamilton’s novelty and greatness. He was the clear-eyed apostle of America's economic future, setting forth a vision that many found enthralling, others unsettling, but that would ultimately prevail. He stood squarely on the modern side of a historical divide that seemed to separate him from other founders. Small wonder he aroused such fear and confusion.

The Christmas I was sixteen, my ma and I were poorer than church mice. My pa died when I was two, taking her heart with him." A smile curved his lips. "She could have remarried for a more comfortable life. But she couldn't bring herself to do it. We were happy, though, her and I. Just when I was getting old enough to do odd jobs, bring in some money to make her life easier, she got sick. I stayed home to nurse her. She had no strength left. But somehow she'd scraped together the last of her red yarn and made me a pair of stockings. My Christmas gift that year." Sensing his thoughts lingered in the past, Louisa brushed a finger over the scrap in her palm. "She died several weeks later." Louise caught her breath, aching for the pain of that young man. "I took a lot of ribbing for wearing red stockings. But I didn't give them up, even when I could afford to. I felt like they kept my ma close. Like she was with me." Tears welled up in Louisa's eyes. One dripped over. He caught the drop on the tip of his finger. "They brought me luck." "That's why you're called Red. I wondered.

A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.” “Very kind of you.” “Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.” Daddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. “Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.

We are still in the Age of Rationalism, which began in the eighteenth century and is now rapidly nearing its close. We are all its creatures whether we know and wish it or not. The word is familiar enough, but who knows how much it implies? It is the arrogance of the urban intellect, which, detached from its roots and no longer guided by strong instinct, looks down with contempt on the full-blooded thinking of the past and the wisdom of ancient peasant stock. It is the period in which everyone can read and write and therefore must have his say and always "knows better." This type of mind is obsessed by concepts - the new gods of the Age - and it exercises its wits on the world as it sees it. "It is no good," it says; "we could make it better; here goes, let us set up a program for a better world!" Nothing could be easier for persons of intelligence, and no doubt seems to be felt that this world will then materialize of itself. It is given a label, "Human Progress," and now that it has a name, it is. Those who doubt it are narrow reactionaries, heretics, and, what is worse, persons devoid of democratic virtue: away with them! In this wise the fear of reality was overcome by intellectual arrogance, the darkness that comes from ignorance of all things of life, spiritual poverty, lack of reverence, and, finally, world-alien stupidity - for there is nothing stupider than the rootless urban intelligence.

This kind of speculation reached a high point with the Pentagon's initiative of creating a 'futures market in events', a stock market of prices for terrorist attacks or catastrophes. You bet on the probable occurrence of such events against those who don't believe they'll happen. This speculative market is intended to operate like the market in soya or sugar. You might speculate on the number of AIDS victims in Africa or on the probability that the San Andreas Fault will give way (the Pentagon's initiative is said to derive from the fact that they credit the free market in speculation with better forecasting powers than the secret services). Of course it is merely a step from here to insider trading: betting on the event before you cause it is still the surest way (they say Bin Laden did this, speculating on TWA shares before 11 September). It's like taking out life insurance on your wife before you murder her. There's a great difference between the event that happens (happened) in historical time and the event that happens in the real time of information. To the pure management of flows and markets under the banner of planetary deregulation, there corresponds the 'global' event- or rather the globalized non-event: the French victory in the World Cup, the year 2000, the death of Diana, The Matrix, etc. Whether or not these events are manufactured, they are orchestrated by the silent epidemic of the information networks. Fake events.

From your perspective today, Kathy, your bemusement is perfectly reasonable. But you must try and see it historically. After the war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after another so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask the sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most...By the time people became concerned about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well, by then it was too late...How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. For a long time you were kept in the shadow...[and if people think about you], they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter...Do you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human.

In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London. Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” to anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces.

With the increasing recognition of Jews as the parasitic germs of these diseases, state after state was forced in the last years to take a position on this fateful question for nations. Imbued with the instinct of self-preservation, they had to take those measures which were suited to protect for good their own people against this international poison. Even if Bolshevik Russia is the concrete product of this Jewish infection, one should not forget that democratic capitalism creates the conditions for it. In this way, the Jews prepare what the same Jews execute in the second stage of this process. In the first stage, they deprive the majority of men of their rights and reduce them to helpless slaves. Or, as they themselves put it, they make them expropriated proletarians in order to spur them on, as a fanaticized mob, to destroy the foundations of their state. Later, this is followed by the extermination of their own national intelligentsia, and finally by the elimination of all cultural foundations that, as a thousand-year-old heritage, could provide these people with their inner worth or serve as a warning to the future. What remains after that is the beast in man and a Jewish class that, as parasites in leadership positions, will in the end destroy the fertile soil on which it thrives. On this process-which according to Mommsen results in the Jewish engineered decomposition of people and states-the young, awakening Europe has now declared war. Proud and honorable people in other parts of the world have allied themselves to it. They will be joined by hundreds of millions of oppressed men who, irrespective of how their present leaders may view this, will one day break their chains. The end of these liars will come, liars who claim to protect the world against a threatening domination but who actually only seek to save their own world-rule. We are now in the midst of this mighty, truly historic awakening of the people, partly as leading, acting, or performing men. On the one side stand the men of the democracies that form the heart of Jewish capitalism, with their whole dead weight of dusty theories of state, their parliamentary corruption, their outdated social order, their Jewish brain trusts, their Jewish newspapers, stock exchanges, and banks-a combination, a mix of political and economic racketeers of the worst sort; on their side, there is the Bolshevik state, that is, that number of brutish men over whom the Jew, as in the Soviet Union, wields his bloody whip. And on the other side stand those nations who fight for their freedom and independence, for the securing of their people’s daily bread. Adolf Hitler – speech to the Reichstag April 26, 1942

So the Bawdy Bluestocking was the proprietress of her own shop, selling lurid novels to ladies in the front and more esoteric fare in the back, from the looks of the shelves around him. He spied Pope and Crabbe, Shakespeare, of course, and names he did not recognize at all. He wondered how she chose her stock and where it came from. She must spend her days in endless research. The thought was unaccountably lovely to him.

armour in battle. I am also thankful for Captain Peter Stocking and Dr Justin Pepperell for ensuring I was factually correct in medical and surgical aspects. Finally, Mr Norman Franks was kind enough to lend his deep expertise on air power and help me comprehend the air contribution to the campaign. I have hugely appreciated the large number of veterans who have ensured that my historical understanding of the Army of 1944 has stayed on track. A full list of those who have helped is enclosed at the back of this book, but I would particularly like to single out Sydney Jary, Joe Lawler, Jon Majendie, Ian Hammerton, Ken Tout and Jack Swaab. Most of all I am indebted to Field Marshal the Lord Bramall

In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London. Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” too anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces.

Foreign stocks have historically offered several benefits for U.S. investors. First, foreign stocks do not always move in correlation with the U.S. equity markets, which creates a diversification opportunity. Second, international stocks trade in foreign currencies. This offers investors a hedge against a decline in the U.S. dollar. Both are important reasons to have some foreign stock exposure in a portfolio.

Optimizations like this work well in industries with large amounts of structured data on meaningful business outcomes. In this case, “structured” refers to data that has been categorized, labeled, and made searchable. Prime examples of well-structured corporate data sets include historic stock prices, credit-card usage, and mortgage defaults.

The Upside of Heuristics The economist Harry Markowitz won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing modern portfolio theory: his groundbreaking “mean-variance portfolio optimization” showed how an investor could make an optimal allocation among various funds and assets to maximize returns at a given level of risk. So when it came time to invest his own retirement savings, it seems like Markowitz should have been the one person perfectly equipped for the job. What did he decide to do? I should have computed the historical covariances of the asset classes and drawn an efficient frontier. Instead, I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn’t in it—or if it went way down and I was completely in it. My intention was to minimize my future regret. So I split my contributions fifty-fifty between bonds and equities. Why in the world would he do that?

present counties of Clare, Galway, and Mayo, whence came the family name, in a contraction of Connaught-Galway to Connelly, Conly, Cory, Coddy, Coidy, and, finally, "Cod " Y• All this almost makes sense. However, it is only one of the legends Mrs. Wetmore offers up as fact in her book, despite her disclaimer in the preface that "embarrassed with riches of fact, I have had no thought of fiction." For the truth about William Cody's lineage, we must turn to Don Russell's authoritative biography, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. Russell's research was thorough and exemplary; the notes for his book in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, are proof of that. According to Russell, "Buffalo Bill's most remote definitely known ancestor was one Philip, whose surname appears in various surviving records as Legody, Lagody, McCody, Mocody, Micody ... as well as Codie, Gody, Coady, and Cody." Russell traces Philip to Philippe Le Caude of the Isle of Jersey, who married Marthe Le Brocq of Guernsey in the parish of St. Brelades, Isle of Jersey, on September 15, 1692. Although the family names are French, the Channel Islands have been British possessions since the Middle Ages. No Irish or Spanish in sight; just good English stock. The Cody Family Association's book The Descendants of Philip and Martha Cody carries the line down to the present day. Buffalo Bill was sixth in descent from Philip. Philip and Martha purchased a home in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1698, and occupied it for twenty-five years, farming six acres of adjacent land. In 1720 Philip bought land in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and he and his family moved there, probably in 1722 or 1723. When he died in 1743, his will was probated under the name of Coady. The spelling of the family name had stabilized by the time Bill's father, Isaac, the son of Philip and Lydia Martin Cody, was born on September 15, 1811, in Toronto Township, Peel County, Upper Canada. It is Lydia Martin Cody who may have been responsible for the report of an Irish king in the family genealogy; she boasted that her ancestors were of Irish royal birth. When Isaac Cody was seventeen years old, his family moved to a farm near Cleveland, Ohio, in the vicinity of what is today Eighty-third Street and Euclid Avenue. That move would ultimately embroil William Cody in a lawsuit many years later, one of several suits he was destined to lose. Six years after arriving in Ohio, Isaac married Martha Miranda

The 4% withdrawal rate simply isn’t safe when stock market valuations are at historical highs and yields are at historical lows.

As more complex forms of knowledge emerge and an economic surplus is built up, experts devote themselves full-time to the subjects of their expertise, which, with the development of conceptual machineries, may become increasingly removed from the pragmatic necessities of everyday life. Experts in these rarefied bodies of knowledge lay claim to a novel status. They are not only experts in this or that sector of the societal stock of knowledge, they claim ultimate jurisdiction over that stock of knowledge in its totality. They are, literally, universal experts. This does not mean that they claim to know everything, but rather that they claim to know the ultimate significance of what everybody knows and does. Other men may continue to stake out particular sectors of reality, but they claim expertise in the ultimate definitions of reality as such. This stage in the development of knowledge has a number of consequences. The first, which we have already discussed, is the emergence of pure theory. Because the universal experts operate on a level of considerable abstraction from the vicissitudes of everyday life, both others and they themselves may conclude that their theories have no relation whatever to the ongoing life of the society, but exist in a soft of Platonic heaven of ahistorical and asocial ideation. This is, of course, an illusion, but it can have great socio-historical potency, by virtue of the relationship between the reality-defining and reality-producing processes. A second consequence is a strengthening of traditionalism in the institutionalized actions thus legitimated, that is, a strengthening of the inherent tendency of institutionalization toward inertia.91 Habitualization and institutionalization in themselves limit the flexibility of human actions. Institutions tend to persist unless they become “problematic.” Ultimate legitimations inevitably strengthen this tendency. The more abstract the legitimations are, the less likely they are to be modified in accordance with changing pragmatic exigencies. If there is a tendency to go on as before anyway, the tendency is obviously strengthened by having excellent reasons for doing so. This means that institutions may persist even when, to an outside observer, they have lost their original functionality or practicality. One does certain things not because they work, but because they are right—right, that is, in terms of the ultimate definitions of reality promulgated by the universal experts.

Spreadsheets can model the historic frequency of big stock market declines. But they can’t model the feeling of coming home, looking at your kids, and wondering if you’ve made a mistake that will impact their lives. Studying history makes you feel like you understand something. But until you’ve lived through it and personally felt its consequences, you may not understand it enough to change your behavior. We all think we know how the world works. But we’ve all only experienced a tiny sliver of it. As investor Michael Batnick says, “some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood.” We are all victims, in different ways, to that truth.

Historically, manipulating positive news to increase the demand for a stock has been a way to drive up the price before selling it at an inflated figure. The illegal tactic, better known as ‘pump and dump’, is prohibited because markets need our trust to function. Yet soon the crypto surge appeared to be the result of just such a ploy. Writing in Vox, William Harris, the former CEO of PayPal, called Bitcoin ‘a colossal pump and dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen’ in an article headlined ‘Bitcoin is the greatest scam in history’.

On the one hand people that have been investing through the events of 1987, 2000, and 2008 have experienced a lot of different markets. On the other hand, isn't it possible that this experience can lead to overconfidence? Failing to admit you're wrong anchoring to previous outcomes two dangerous things happen when you rely too heavily on investment history as a guide to what's going to happen next 1) you'll likely miss the outlier events that mo ve the needle the most. Important events in historical data are the big outliers. The record-breaking events they are what moved the needle in the economy and the stock market - The Great Depression, World War II, the .Com bubble, September 11th, the housing crash of the mid 2000s. A handful of outlier events played an enormous role because they influenced so many unrelated events in their wake.

In etching the arc of the Hindu civilisation, what is astounding in hindsight is that Sarda treats the end of the Mahabharata War, the beginning of Kali Yuga, as the turning point in the history of Bharat—an approach consistent with that of Indic epistemological systems. Now, barely 115 years after Sarda’s book was published, anyone who believes in the historicity of the Mahabharata War or the concept of a Kali Yuga, would be ridiculed for putting stock in ‘myth’ and ‘fiction’. This demonstrates the manner in which the agency of the Indic consciousness over time and its subjectivity has become entirely subservient to the totalising nature of the casual coloniality we encounter in Bharat today.

People have realised that, in light of historical statistics, they have been too fearful of stocks. Armed with this new knowledge, investors have now bid stock prices up to a higher level.

A person who can remember stories, poems, lyrics of songs, baseball statistics, chemical formulas, mathematical operations, historical dates, biblical passages, and wise quotations has many advantages over one who has not cultivated such a skill. The consciousness of such a person is independent of the order that may or may not be provided by the environment. She can always amuse herself, and find meaning in the contents of her mind. While others need external stimulation—television, reading, conversation, or drugs—to keep their minds from drifting into chaos, the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self-contained.

The takeaway from these studies is simple. Broad diversification is the only guaranteed way to approximate the superior returns that stocks have historically offered investors. Putting together a narrow portfolio of stocks may be a big winner, but usually is a loser.

I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!

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In response to current events, people often reach for historical analogies, and this occasion was no exception. The trick is to choose the right analogy. In August 2007, the analogies that came to mind—both inside and outside the Fed—were October 1987, when the Dow Jones industrial average had plummeted nearly 23 percent in a single day, and August 1998, when the Dow had fallen 11.5 percent over three days after Russia defaulted on its foreign debts. With help from the Fed, markets had rebounded each time with little evident damage to the economy. Not everyone viewed these interventions as successful, though. In fact, some viewed the Fed’s actions in the fall of 1998—three quarter-point reductions in the federal funds rate—as an overreaction that helped fuel the growing dot-com bubble. Others derided what they perceived to be a tendency of the Fed to respond too strongly to price declines in stocks and other financial assets, which they dubbed the “Greenspan put.” (A put is an options contract that protects the buyer against loss if the price of a stock or other security declines.) Newspaper opinion columns in August 2007 were rife with speculation that Helicopter Ben would provide a similar put soon. In arguing against Fed intervention, many commentators asserted that investors had grown complacent and needed to be taught a lesson. The cure to the current mess, this line of thinking went, was a repricing of risk, meaning a painful reduction in asset prices—from stocks to bonds to mortgage-linked securities. “Credit panics are never pretty, but their virtue is that they restore some fear and humility to the marketplace,” the Wall Street Journal had editorialized, in arguing for no rate cut at the August 7 FOMC meeting.

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely, talks about the psychology behind many of our poor investment decisions in a manner that is friendly for the layperson. Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel and Triumph of the Optimists by Elroy Dimson both discuss historical stock market returns in detail.

The economist Harry Markowitz won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Economics for developing modern portfolio theory: his groundbreaking “mean-variance portfolio optimization” showed how an investor could make an optimal allocation among various funds and assets to maximize returns at a given level of risk. So when it came time to invest his own retirement savings, it seems like Markowitz should have been the one person perfectly equipped for the job. What did he decide to do? I should have computed the historical covariances of the asset classes and drawn an efficient frontier. Instead, I visualized my grief if the stock market went way up and I wasn’t in it—or if it went way down and I was completely in it. My intention was to minimize my future regret. So I split my contributions fifty-fifty between bonds and equities. Why

Paul tells us: “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:4 – 5). The gospel they believed and received wasn’t just a theological construct or a churchy platitude. Sure, it came through spoken and written words, and it was preached, taught, and shared. But it also came in power. Often Christians are either “word” people or “power” people. On the one hand, we may lean toward a rationalized Christianity. This type of Christianity holds to the gospel Word without gospel power. It preaches, teaches, catechizes, studies, memorizes, and shares the word but with little effect. It possesses “wise and persuasive words” but not “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4). This kind of Christianity can master systematic, biblical, and historical theology without being mastered by Christ. It can identify idols but remains powerless to address their power. Why? Because it replaces the power of the Spirit with the power of knowledge. On the other hand, there is an equal danger in spiritualized Christianity. Such Christianity prays, sings, shouts, and claims victory over a lost world without lifting a finger to share God’s gospel. It is not enough to pray for power; we must proclaim God’s Word. The power of the Spirit works through the proclaimed Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. My pastor during college, Tom Nelson, always said: “Don’t just stand on a shovel and pray for a hole.” Spiritualized Christianity tends to stand and pray, emphasizing private or emotional experiences with God. What we need is prayer and proclamation, power and Word. The Thessalonians had word and power, they grew in understanding and experience, but they also had full conviction. It is not enough to have spiritual power and good theology. These must also be coupled with faith, an active embrace of God’s promises in Christ, which brings about conviction. Full conviction comes when we are set free from false forms of security and experience Spirit-empowered faith in the word of Christ. It springs from genuine encounter with Christ. Full conviction transcends intellectual doubt and emotional experiences, and in the silence of persecution it says: “Christ is enough.” True security, deep security, comes through the reasonable, powerful, Christ-centered conviction that Jesus is enough, not only for us but for the world. When we falter, the church is present to exhort, encourage, and pray for one another to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts. May we toss out the penny stocks of the fear of man to invest deeply in the limitless riches of Christ.

Chris Krueger, long-time Capitol Hill watcher for Guggenheim Securities, says the people expecting this kind of kumbaya moment are “Pollyannas”. He said: “My reading of the White House is that they already feel pretty good about their legacy, having done what no administration since Harry Truman has done and extended access to healthcare.” These are the facts on the ground, which bode ill for investors, but there is a conundrum: history suggests we are at a point in the political cycle when markets usually do well. After some volatility around the midterms, the stock market has historically settled into a very strong year in the third year of the presidential cycle, according to an analysis by Jeff Hirsch, editor of the Stock Trader’s Almanac. Sweeping in 180 years of data on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and predecessor indices, he calculates the average Year 3 gain to be 10.4 per cent, almost double the next best year, the presidential election year itself.

The new structure of the U.S. stock market had removed the big Wall Street banks from their historic, lucrative role as intermediary. At the same time it created, for any big bank, some unpleasant risks: that the customer would somehow figure out what was happening to his stock market orders. And that the technology might somehow go wrong. If the markets collapsed, or if another flash crash occurred, the high-frequency traders would not take 85 percent of the blame, or bear 85 percent of the costs of the inevitable lawsuits. The banks would bear the lion’s share of the blame and the costs. The relationship of the big Wall Street banks to the high-frequency traders, when you thought about it, was a bit like the relationship of the entire society to the big Wall

The part of national income that is available to families, after taxes have been paid and any transfers received, is personal disposable income, which is the second line from the top. It is a good deal smaller than GDP, but the historical picture of growth and fluctuation is very similar. Much the same is true if we look, not at what people get, but at what they spend. This is consumers’ expenditure, the third line. The difference between personal disposable income and consumers’ expenditure is the amount that people save, and the figure shows that the fraction of their income that Americans save has been falling, especially over the past thirty years. We don’t know exactly why this has happened, and there are several possible explanations: it is easier to borrow than it used to be; it is no longer as necessary as it once was to save up to make the deposit on a house, a car, or a dishwasher; Social Security has perhaps reduced the need to save for retirement; and the average American benefited from increases in the stock market and in house prices—at least until the Great Recession.

What emerged from the historic turmoil was a city where race and class tensions pervaded the atmosphere. The very rich were mostly walled off in hidden mansions, and much of the white middle class remained living in hyper-segregated neighborhoods. The brown, black, and immigrant working class and poor—who were becoming the bulk of the city’s ordinary people—were rarely seen by well-off, white L.A. unless they were cleaning houses, weeding gardens, working nonunion construction, driving buses, parking cars, stocking shelves in big-box factory stores, or cooking food and mopping floors in every restaurant in town. By

Before he could decide what to do, he heard a female voice call out, "Pepe? Mack?" Pepe recognized the voice as belonging to Senora Rodriguez. No, Senora Thompson. There'd been a wedding in late summer. He hurried out to the main part of the barn to see what she wanted. Senora Thompson stood just inside the entrance, holding the reins of her mare, Bianca, a black beauty with four white stockings and a blaze down her nose her husband had given her after their marriage.

Investors should avoid any urge to forecast the stock market. Forecasts, even forecasts by recognized “experts,” are unlikely to be better than random guesses. “It will fluctuate,” declared J. P. Morgan when asked about his expectation for the stock market. He was right. All other market forecasts—usually estimating the overall direction of the stock market—are historically about 50 percent right and 50 percent wrong. You wouldn’t bet much money on a coin toss, so don’t even think of acting on stock market forecasts.

Historically, the U.S. stock market has often anticipated recessions by six months or so. Likewise, recovery from a recession is very often preceded by a rise in the stock market.

Today observations about historic price patterns may be used to supplement fundamental analysis, but we hear far less than we did in the past about people basing decisions primarily on what price movements tell them. Part of the decline of technical analysis can be attributed to the random walk hypothesis, a component of the Chicago theory developed in the early 1960s, primarily by Professor Eugene Fama. The random walk hypothesis says a stock’s past price movements are of absolutely no help in predicting future movements.

If historical growth and analyst estimates are of little value, what is the solution? Ultimately, for a firm to grow, it has to either manage its existing investments better (efficiency growth) or make new investments (new investment growth). In the special case where a company's margins are stable and there is no efficiency-driven growth, you should look at how much of its earnings a firm is reinvesting back in the business and the return on these investments. While reinvestment and return on investment are generic terms, the way in which we define them will depend on whether we are looking at equity earnings or operating income. With equity earnings, we measure reinvestment as the portion of net income not paid out as dividends (retention ratio) and use the return on equity to measure the quality of investment. With operating income, we measure reinvestment as the reinvestment rate and use the return on capital to measure investment quality.

Gandhi today is up for grabs. He has become abstract. ahistorical, postmodern, no longer a man in and of his time but a free-floating concept, a part of the available stock of cultural symbols, an image that can be borrowed, used, distorted, reinvented, to fit many different purposes, and to the devil with historicity or truth. Richard Attenborough's Gandhi stuck me, when it was first released, as an example of this type of unhistorical Western saint-making. Here was Gandhi-as-guru, purveying the fashionable product, the Wisdom of the East, and Gandhi-as-Christ, dying and frequently going on hunger strike) so that others may live.

How do accountants measure the value of assets? For most fixed and long-term assets, such as land, buildings, and equipment, they begin with what you originally paid for the asset (historical cost) and reduce that value for the aging of the asset (depreciation or amortization). For short-term assets (current assets), including inventory (raw materials, works in progress, and finished goods), receivables (summarizing moneys owed to the firm), and cash, accountants are more amenable to the use of an updated or market value. If a company invests in the securities or assets of another company, the investment is valued at an updated market value if the investment is held for trading and historical cost when it is not. In the special case where the holding comprises more than 50 percent of the value of another company (subsidiary), the firm must record all of the subsidiary's assets and liabilities on its balance sheet (this is called consolidation), with a minority interest item capturing the percentage of the subsidiary that does not belong to it. Finally, you have what are loosely categorized as intangible assets. While you would normally consider items such as brand names, customer loyalty, and a well-trained work force as intangible assets, the most encountered intangible asset in accounting is goodwill. When a firm acquires another firm, the price it pays is first allocated to the existing assets of the acquired firm. Any excess paid becomes goodwill and is recorded as an asset.

We want products in stock and immediately available to customers, and we want minimal total inventory in order to keep associated holding costs, and thus prices, low. To achieve both, there is a right amount of inventory. We use historical purchase data to forecast customer demand for a product and expected variability in that demand. We use data on the historical performance of vendors to estimate replenishment times. We can determine where to stock the product within our fulfillment network based on inbound and outbound transportation costs, storage costs, and anticipated customer locations.

If you think the world is going to mean revert to a place where established, traditional banks and oil-related companies are going to fundamentally outperform and lead the economy then you should own value stocks. Unfortunately, these industries are under major disruption and they will not mean revert as they did historically. The underperformance of financial and energy companies is not a cyclical issue, as it would have been historically. It is a disruption, paradigm shift issue.

They focused variously on successfully getting Africatown listed on the National Register of Historic Places, restoring the town’s housing stock to attract new residents, creating business connections to Africa, fighting the expansion of heavy industry, working to clean up legacy pollution, restoring the town’s access to the river, and trying to keep county officials from closing Africatown’s aging school.

What if you want the payouts to continue “forever,” as you might for an endowment? Computer simulations showed me that with the best long-term investments, such as stocks and commercial real estate, annual future spending should be limited to the inflation-adjusted level of 2 percent of the original gift. This surprisingly conservative figure assumes that future investment results will be similar in risk and return to US historical experience. In that case, the chance that the endowment is never exhausted turns out to be 96 percent. The 2 percent spending limit is so low because, if the fund is sharply reduced in its early years by a severe market decline, a higher spending requirement might wipe it out.

But going against the mkt., everything is turned on its head: the more a stock is depreciated, the larger the profit, and vice versa.

Yes, Mother Goose—that’s me! What threw you off, the garters and stockings and black leather whip? Like I said, no one ever gets these things right. Father Goose says they’ve twisted my stories around, and according to the books he brought home with him after he crossed back over, they claim I never existed at all!  I guess, historically speaking, that’s true. I never did really exist in that world. From what I hear, it’s dreadfully dull. I’m sure I would just be bored. It’s probably better that the real stories never made it out. I don’t know that the Earthfolk were ready for them.

In a book published originally in 1962 and curiously often overlooked today, Arthur Wainwright also directly addressed the question. He contended that although the doctrine of the Trinity is not stated formally in the NT there is evidence that "the problem of the Trinity was in the minds of certain New Testament writers, and that they made an attempt to answer it."24 As Wainwright distinguished the terms, a "doctrine" represents an answer to a theological "problem." Wainwright defined "the problem of the Trinity" as prompted "because Christians believed that Jesus was divine," and they expressed this belief "both in the writings of the New Testament and in the worship which was practised by the earliest Christian communities." Because early Christians also dominantly "upheld the Jewish belief in the unity of God, the belief in Christ's divinity raised a serious problem." How could "the Father" and Jesus both be treated as divine "and yet God be one?"25 Granting readily that in the second century C.E. and thereafter Christian efforts to grapple with the problem of the Trinity "became more and more systematized"; he nevertheless insisted, "New Testament writers were aware of the trinitarian problem and made an attempt to answer it," although in the NT texts "it is easier to see the first attempts to clarify the problem than the first attempts to answer it."26 It is, of course, technically a verbal anachronism to use the word Trinity in discussions of NT texts, for the word and the elaboration of the many issues involved appeared in subsequent centuries. But, equally, it would be historically simplistic to disconnect these later developments from the phenomena of NT beliefs and devotional practices that we have analyzed in this book. So, Wainwright was correct in probing the connections and also, in my view, in contending that in NT texts we see earlier evidence that Christians recognized the basics of "the problem" involved. Wainwright was also perceptive in emphasizing the importance of worship practices as evidence of how Jesus had come to complicate (if I may use the term) the question of "God" for believers, already in the first century C.E. The problem of the Trinity was from the beginning closely connected with Christian worship. It was not the concern of the scholar alone, but was a vital issue for the worshipping Christian. . . . The nature of Christian worship influenced the development of Christian thought, and, conversely, the development of thought influenced the nature of worship. Such an interplay of thought and worship helps to explain the emergence of the problem of the Trinity.27 As we have seen (especially in chapter 3), the devotional practices reflected in the NT constitute significant evidence, particularly for taking stock of the place of Jesus

To do index arbitrage, PNP developed techniques in the mid-1980s for finding baskets of stocks that did a particularly good job of tracking an index. We used this very profitably the day after “Black Monday,” October 19, 1987, to capture a spread of over 10 percent between the S&P 500 Index and the futures contracts on it. Quants have honed this to a fine art and, through their trading, generally keep the price discrepancy very small. To cut taxes, start with a tracking basket and, each time a stock drops, say, 10 percent, sell the loser and reinvest the proceeds in another stock or stocks chosen so the new basket continues to track well. If you want only short-term losses, which is usually best, sell within a year of purchase. I advise anyone considering doing this in a serious way to study it first with simulations using historical databases.

Short selling overpriced warrants was profitable on average but risky. The same was true for buying stocks. The two risks largely canceled each other when we hedged the warrants by purchasing the associated common stock. In a historical simulation our optimized method made 25 percent a year with low risk, even during the great 1929 stock market crash and its aftermath.

The stocks that had gone up the most did worse as a group than the market in the next few weeks, and the stocks that were the most down did better. Historically, the annualized return was 20 percent from buying the one-tenth of stocks that had fallen most and selling short the tenth that had risen most. We called the system MUD, as it was constructed from the “most-up, most-down” stocks. As UCI mathematician William F. Donoghue would joke, “Thorp, my advice is to buy low and sell high.” The portfolio of long stocks tracked the market and the short portfolio did the opposite, so the two sides together mostly canceled the movement of the market. This gave us what we liked, a market-neutral portfolio. But that portfolio still had larger fluctuations in value than our usual investments, so we put statistical arbitrage aside for the time being.

Take the stock market.You can show people that the market historically crashes every five to seven years

On a frosty December morning, with her best handbag, hat, and a small suitcase she handed over the keys to their flat to her maid and asked her to keep their most precious belongings safe there... Then she joined the disorderly progression of Jews heading for the Veletržní palác. Instead of taking something necessary and useful like tinned fish or packet soup, Anka carried a large hat box tied with string. In it were three dozen of her maid's delicious sugar-coated donuts, [her husband's] favorite treat... The young bride kept brushing her hair and reapplying her makeup. [The people around her] were even more intrigued when she knelt on the floor in her fine stockings to use her eyelash curlers. "I just wanted to look my best for the man I loved." A passage about Anka Bergman, a Czech Holocaust survivor, being transferred to the Theresienstadt ghetto

On a frosty December morning, with her best handbag, hat, and a small suitcase she handed over the keys to their flat to her maid and asked her to keep their most precious belongings safe there... Then she joined the disorderly progression of Jews heading for the Veletržní palác. Instead of taking something necessary and useful like tinned fish or packet soup, Anka carried a large hat box tied with string. In it were three dozen of her maid's delicious sugar-coated donuts, [her husband's] favorite treat... The young bride kept brushing her hair and reapplying her makeup. [The people around her] were even more intrigued when she knelt on the floor in her fine stockings to use her eyelash curlers. "I just wanted to look my best for the man I loved." A passage about Anka Bergman, a Czech Holocaust survivor, being transferred to the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Some critics acidly observed that people throughout the ages have always believed they were living in particularly crucial times. There is some truth to this criticism, because human history is indeed continuously decisive, for in humanity’s march through time every step determines the future of our species. But only the cynic would sneer at the idea that some steps, some historical periods, are more decisive than others—not only in the shaping of a particular race or nation, but for humanity as a whole. Possibly one such decisive historical threshold was what the German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers styled the “axial age”—the period between 800–500 B.C.E. when “thought turned back upon thought”: the epoch of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Zoroaster, Heraclitus, Plato, and Socrates.1 In the West, this development gradually led to what can only be described as the enthronement and autarchy of cold reason and the consequent suppression of nonrational modes of consciousness. As many contemporary thinkers have shown, this inflation of ratio lies at the root of today’s moral and spiritual bankruptcy, and its disastrous effects can be witnessed all around us (and in us, if we care to look). What is perhaps most disheartening is that this lopsided orientation to life is now being thrust upon the “underdeveloped” world, which merely magnifies the existing threat to our planet’s ecology and to the survival of countless life forms, not least our own human species. When we take stock of the folly of humankind we begin to realize the extent of the global problems induced, in the last analysis, by hypertrophied (egocentric) reason. We may also be impressed with the traditional Hindu explanation of the particular spirit of our era. For, according to the computations of the Hindu pundits, we are well into the “dawn phase” of the kali-yuga, or “dark age.” Like so many premodern mythologies, Hinduism views the evolution of humanity as a cyclical process of progressive moral degeneration from an original state of purity and spiritual wholeness. The

Technical analysis is more concerned with the price movements of a stock or an index by examining historical records of trading activity. A technical analyst looks at past data to predict future price movements. They believe that history tends to repeat itself in the stock market and that past performance is the best indicator of what will happen in the future.

Our historical tendency to be overweight the Nordic stock markets has mostly been influenced by the perceived quality of Nordic management teams. Generally speaking, Nordic managers have been able to articulate their case clearly and apply a degree of focus that is not always the case elsewhere in Europe. One can also discern a high degree of adaptability. Scandinavian companies are not just open to foreign excursions. It was striking to note on a recent trip just how many of the large and successful companies are run by foreigners. A Belgian is head of Atlas Copco, a Scot runs SKF, and Nokia and Electrolux have recently recruited American bosses. This openness to outsiders stands in contrast to recent developments in Southern Europe, where Italy and France are engaged in a race to the bottom to redefine strategic industries for protectionist purposes.

Robert Shiller, a finance professor at Yale University, says Graham inspired his valuation approach: Shiller compares the current price of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index against average corporate profits over the past 10 years (after inflation). By scanning the historical record, Shiller has shown that when his ratio goes well above 20, the market usually delivers poor returns afterward; when it drops well below 10, stocks typically produce handsome gains down the road.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08 represented the greatest financial downswing of my lifetime, and consequently it presents the best opportunity to observe, reflect and learn. The scene was set for its occurrence by a number of developments. Here’s a partial list: Government policies supported an expansion of home ownership—which by definition meant the inclusion of people who historically couldn’t afford to buy homes—at a time when home prices were soaring; The Fed pushed interest rates down, causing the demand for higher-yielding instruments such as structured/levered mortgage securities to increase; There was a rising trend among banks to make mortgage loans, package them and sell them onward (as opposed to retaining them); Decisions to lend, structure, assign credit ratings and invest were made on the basis of unquestioning extrapolation of low historic mortgage default rates; The above four points resulted in an increased eagerness to extend mortgage loans, with an accompanying decline in lending standards; Novel and untested mortgage backed securities were developed that promised high returns with low risk, something that has great appeal in non-skeptical times; Protective laws and regulations were relaxed, such as the Glass-Steagall Act (which prohibited the creation of financial conglomerates), the uptick rule (which prevented traders who had bet against stocks from forcing them down through non-stop short selling), and the rules that limited banks’ leverage, permitting it to nearly triple; Finally, the media ran articles stating that risk had been eliminated by the combination of: the adroit Fed, which could be counted on to inject stimulus whenever economic sluggishness developed, confidence that the excess liquidity flowing to China for its exports and to oil producers would never fail to be recycled back into our markets, buoying asset prices, and the new Wall Street innovations, which “sliced and diced” risk so finely, spread it so widely and placed it with those best suited to bear it.

DiPascali, a small terrier-like man with the unpolished speech of his native Queens, came through for Madoff. Using self-taught computer skills and the historical stock and options prices available to any brokerage firm, he created a convincing paper trail covering several years of complex trading activity that almost certainly had never occurred.

Normal business thinking: If we can borrow money at historically low rates, buy back stock, and see the value of management’s options increase, why invest in growth and the jobs that come with it? That’s risky. Amazon business thinking: If we can borrow money at historically low rates, why don’t we invest that money in extraordinarily expensive control delivery systems? That way we secure an impregnable position in retail and asphyxiate our competitors. Then we can get really big, fast.

You can see how the stock price has performed over a variety of periods, the company’s earnings per share (EPS), how earnings compare to the stock price (the P/E, or price-to-earnings ratio), historical dividend payments, and much more.

Questions to ask when analyzing a business Business - How does the company make money? - Does it seem like it should be a good business? Is it competitive? Do suppliers have too much power? Do customers value the product? Are there substitutes? - Without looking at financials, how does the company seem like it has done against competitors in its industry in terms of executing on its vision? - What reputation does the management team have? Do they seem honest? Straightforward? Valuation - What is the company's P/E multiple? Is it high or low for its industry? For the overall market right now? Why might the stock be trading at this valuation? - What is the company's free-cash flow yield? Is this a relevant metric given the stage the company is in? How does it compare to similar companies? - Is the company growing faster or more slowly than other companies with similar multiples? - Based on the number alone, does the company seem to have a rich valuation or a cheap valuation? Why might this be the case? Financials - What has been the trajectory of revenue growth over the past ten years? Why? What is it expected to do in the future? - How has the company's industry been growing? Is the company gaining or losing share in its industry? - What is the company’s level of profit margins? How does it compare to other companies in its industry? - How have margins varied over the past ten years? Why? - What percentage  of the company's costs are fixed costs versus variable costs? - What is the company's historical return on capital? Why is it high/low? What does this say about the quality of the business? - What is the trend in returns on capital? Why? What does this say about the returns the company will have to make on its future investments? - What is the company's dividend policy? Why? If they are paying no dividend or a small dividend, is there a danger that the company's management will waste shareholder's money? Technical - How have the company's shares performed against the overall market and its industry over the past twelve months? - What seems to be driving this under/over performance? - What key news events are likely to impact the stock in the future? - Do mutual funds and other large institutional investors seem to be buying or selling the shares? Sentiment and Expectations - What are the consensus earnings estimates for the next quarter and year? Do they seem aggressive or conservative? - Does consensus opinion seem overly bullish or bearish about the company's future prospects? - What insight do you have that the market might be missing that will cause the shares to appreciate?

Stirling, Scotland, October 1619 "Kristina, wake up and ready yourself for a journey!" In her bedchamber, Kristina MacQueen jolted awake. Had she just heard her mother's voice? 'Twas impossible. Her mother had passed many years ago. The voice had been inside her dream. What had Ma meant about a journey? Kristina had not left the vicinity of her aunt and uncle's manor house in many months. Hearing the faint hoofbeats of many horses galloping in the distance, she sat up and listened. As each moment passed, the horses' hooves pounded closer and closer until they echoed off the cobblestones just outside the window. Her heart thumping and an eerie feeling prickling along her skin, she swung her feet toward the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. A fist battered violently at the home's entrance door below. "Saints. Who could that be?" she whispered. It had to be the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morn, for she heard no one moving about the house and her room was chilly. The visitor couldn't be the physician calling to treat Uncle Gilbert, who suffered from gout, rheumatism and various other ailments. Nay, he wouldn't bring that many horses with him on a house call. Maybe 'twas the creditors, come to expel them from their home. When her uncle's health had declined, so had his funds. Could it be news of her older sister? She had not heard from Anna in many months. Ready yourself for a journey, her mother had said in the dream. Good heavens! Had someone come for her, to take her to Anna? Heart hammering, Kristina leapt from the warm bed. Though she couldn't see, she knew the placement of the furniture in her room and could easily navigate the space without bumping into anything. After tiptoeing across the cold wooden floor in her stockings, she approached the door and turned the knob to open it a crack, then listened. The maids were in an uproar on the ground floor below. "What's the racket?" Aunt Matilda yelled as she tromped by Kristina's chamber and down the stairs. "Who is it?" she demanded near the front door. "Chief Blackburn MacCromar!" The snarled response was bellowed from outside, just below her window. A chill of terror and revulsion flashed through Kristina. "Saints, preserve us." She shut the door and barred it, her fingers trembling. She had not been near the malicious bastard in two years. He had finally come for her. Anxiety and nausea froze her to the spot. What would he do? Would he kill her for a certainty this time?

He made $3 million in a single day, went bankrupt four times, and was blamed for the crash of 1929. Jesse Livermore tells how he did it. Considered to be one of the greatest traders of all time, stock market legend Jesse Livermore made and lost vast fortunes and lived a life that typified the highs and lows of the 1920s and 1930s. So influential was he that many credit him with having caused the crash of 1929. And while America sank into ten long years of the Great Depression, Livermore went short--and made $100 million. Written by Livermore in 1940, the last year of his life, "How to Trade in Stocks" distills the wisdom of his 40 years as a trader. It combines fascinating autobiographical and historical details with step-by-step guidance through the Livermore trading system. Investors learn his prescriptions for analyzing the leading sectors, understanding timing, money management, emotional control, and more.

In sum, investors trying to decide what P/E to pay for a stock, or at what P/E to sell the stock, can look at: (1) the company’s historical P/Es, (2) comparable companies’ P/Es and (3) relative P/Es, as a guide. They should also look at broad market trends to see if P/Es in general are rising or falling. By comparing past conditions with current conditions, investors will often have a good basis for determining an appropriate price/earnings ratio today. The next three sections will look at the three types of P/E analyses listed

P/E is a company’s “price to earnings ratio.” Let's say that a company's stock trades for $100 and that the company has earnings per share (EPS) of $6.50 over the last 12 months. We can calculate a trailing ("last 12 months") P/E ratio for that stock by simply dividing the stock price ("P") by the EPS ("E"), so 100/6.50 equals about 15. We can say that this stock has a TTM P/E (trailing 12 months price to earnings ratio) of 15. Historically that is a pretty good average P/E for a stock or for the stock market as a whole.

Spreadsheets can model the historic frequency of big stock market declines. But they can’t model the feeling of coming home, looking at your kids, and wondering if you’ve made a mistake that will impact their lives.

Ibbotson Associates, founded by Yale scholar Roger Ibbotson, produces a widely used survey of returns covering the past seventy-eight years. Over the nearly eight-decade period from 1926 to 2003, U.S. stocks produced an annual compound return of 10.4 percent, U.S. government bonds returned 5.4 percent, and U.S. Treasury bills generated 3.7 percent. The 5.0 percentage point difference between stock and bond returns represents the historical risk premium, defined as the return to equity holders for accepting risk above the level inherent in bond investments.

If your company has any credible strategy for providing equity-based returns with muted volatility, you have not just a value proposition, but one of the most important value propositions of our time.... What's the concept in an operating real estate REIT? Operating real estate (as distinct from net leases or mortgages, which are other financing concepts) has the potential to produce equity-like long-term returns, but isan extremely powerful diversifier, in that real estate correlates positively with inflation while stocks and bonds correlate negatively with it. Inflation, with it attendant higher interest rates, chokes off new supply of real estate: new expensive to build, to expensive to finance at prevailing market rents. When new supply dwindles, normal growth absorbs the available space and puts upward pressure on rents, increasing cash flows to the owners... until rents get to a point where new construction pencils out again. (Meanwhile, in an inflation/interest rate flareup of any consequence, stocks and bonds are usually getting hit, and sometimes hit hard.) This, to me, is a trifecta of a conceptual value proposition: (a) the potential for the equity-like long-term returns investors need, (b) historically correlated positively with inflation, unlike all financial assets, and (c) just when you think this story can't get better, with 90% of available income paid out currently to income-starved investors.... What's the concept for variable life insurance? It's certainly the least expensive long-term form of life insurance, in that, as the investment portion grows, it extinguishes the insurance company's exposure. (As Ben Baldwin gnomically and brilliantly observes, 'All insurance is term insurance.') It may also be, in a given situation, the cheapest way of funding an estate tax liability, leaving the maximum legacy to one's heirs. And, of course, if the ownership is vested in an insurance trust, one may (under current law at this writing) be bequeathing wealth without income or estate taxation. As long as there is an estate tax - any estate tax - there will be a financial planning issue in the life of every affluent household/family: how do you want the heirs to pay it? And it seems likely that, conceptually, VUL will always be an answer.... Small cap equities? The concept is, clearly, higher returns with - and precisely because of - their higher volatility.

Although those who wait long enough will eventually recoup losses on a diversified portfolio of stocks, buying stocks at or below their historical valuation is the best way to guarantee superior returns.