The risk you are likely to be rewarded for taking is the risk of owning all stocks. In effect, rather than betting on one roll of the dice, one spin at the roulette wheel, or a single hand at the blackjack table, you can own the whole casino. You can do this effortlessly, cheaply, and reliably by buying a total stock-market index fund, a low-cost portfolio of all the stocks worth owning.

That’s why one of my favorite investing rules is “If the market is open, your wallet should be closed.” You should never act on an investing idea the same day you get it; the next day, your mood and situation will have changed, and the facts may look different to you. Sleeping on it is one of the simplest and best ways to make sure your decision is not just a momentary whim.

Being right is the enemy of staying right because it leads you to forget the way the world works.

What history does prove is that how risky stocks seem, and how risky they actually are, are inversely correlated.

The way I like to think of day trading is that it's probably the most effective weapon ever to commit financial suicide, ... It's an absolutely lethal way for the typical person to invest because it's not even really a form of investing, it's gambling pure and simple.

There's no doubt that a lot of this wheeling and dealing has been spurred by the lifting of many of the federal restrictions that were imposed on the utility industry during the Great Depression.

Somehow people look at the performance of the average mutual fund manager and say, 'It's underperforming the superstar of the market, which is the S&P index in the past few years, therefore I can do as well,' ... That's a fallacy. You may be able to do very well, but the fact that the average fund manager is doing worse than average does not mean he's stupid, and his stupidity doesn't make you smart.

People are attracted to stocks that move. The thing that these kinds of speculators, and I'm not going to call them investors, what these speculators are seeking is action.

If a company has stable earnings quarter after quarter, ... and each quarter its earnings go up another penny, and then all of a sudden, they don't go up anymore, investors go nuts.

The alluring, long-shot chance of a huge gain is the grease that lubricates the machine of innovation.